POLA
Jan 3, 2007, 6:08 AM
Having recently read this book, I wanted to share with you all the notes I took down as I read it. Below are mostly quotes (except in the case when I use to show a summarization in my own words) of the book. If you've read this book, then I hope these remind you of its pearls of wisdom, if you haven't read (go now and get it!), I hope these can at least be some fodder for you anti sprawl or pro city arguments in the future.
[B]Streets
Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.
…if a city’s streets are safe from barbarism and fear, the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism and fear. When people say that a city, or a part of it, is dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks.
How successful streets handles strangers:
1) There must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space.
2) There must be eyes upon the street… The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
3) The sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers.
Thin smatterings of nonresidential uses do little good in gray areas [areas of low density zoned for residential] and can do harm, because gray areas are unequipped to handle strangers- or to protect them either, for that matter.
How bars, restaurants, and shops (public commerce) help street life:
1) Give people-both residents and strangers-concrete reasons for using the sidewalks on which these enterprises face.
2) Draw people along the sidewalks past places which have no attractions to the public use in themselves but which become traveled and peopled as routes to somewhere else; this influence does not carry very far geographically, so enterprises must be frequent in a city district if they are to populate with walkers those other stretches of street that lack public places along the sidewalk.
3) Storekeepers and small businessmen are great street watchers and sidewalk guardians.
4) Generate foot traffic that in turn is an attraction to still other people.
[people rarely use the center of a street when it is closed to traffic
except when crossing it. As a result, the advantage of a pedestrian
street is not more room but the ease at which you can cross the
street. Thus, we should worry less about closing streets off to
traffic, and more about calming traffic so that crossing is easy]
Traffic
Is it true that diversity causes traffic congestion? Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.
The problem that lies behind consideration for pedestrians, as it lies
behind all other city traffic difficulties, is how to cut down
absolute numbers of surface vehicles and enable those that remain to
work harder and more efficiently [less personal cars and more room for
trucks and busses]
...The more space that is provided for cars in cities, the greater
becomes the need for use of cars, and hence for still more space for
them [vicious cycle]
...a good many city streets (not all) need visual interruptions,
cutting off the indefinite distant view and at the same time visually
heightening and celebrating intense street use by giving it a hint of
enclosure and entity.
Parks
Conventionally, neighborhood parks or park like open spaces are considered boons
conferred on the deprived populations of cities. Let us turn this thought
around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and
appreciation conferred on them.
…in understanding park behavior… junk the false reassurance that parks are real
estate stabilizers or community anchors.
Unpopular parks… have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their
dangers spill over into the areas surrounding, so that streets along such parks
become known as danger places too and are avoided.
…neighborhood parks themselves are directly and drastically affected by the way
the neighborhood acts upon them.
(A good park is) busy fairly continuously for the same basic reasons that a
lively sidewalk is used continuously: because of functional physical diversity
among adjacent uses, and hence diversity among users and their schedule.
[A park in a mostly business zoned area will only be busy during lunch hours,
and a vacuum will exist at all other times. A park in a mostly residential zoned
area will be only busy for the hours before and just after noon for aprox. 5
hours as mothers and children use it, and a vacuum will exist in at all other
times. This vacuum will be filled by blight in the form of subversive people
using the park or no one using the park and it becoming a “dead zone”. Either
form of blight will repel liveliness and further ruin the park to newcomers and
users.]
[Many cities contain a focal point that needs or could benefit from a park. You can find such areas by looking for where people hand out flyers if legal.]
… there is no point in bringing parks to where the people are, if in the process the reasons that the people are there are wiped out and the park substituted for them… Neighborhood parks fail to substitute in any way for the plentiful city diversity. Those that are successful never serve as barriers or as interruptions to the intricate functioning of the city around them. Rather, they help to knit together diverse surrounding functions by giving them a pleasant joint facility.
General
People or users with more money at their command or greater respectability… can
fairly easily supplant those less prosperous or of less status, and commonly do
in city neighborhoods that achieve popularity [GENTRAFICATION]. The reverse
seldom happens. People or uses with less money at their command less choice or
less open respectability move into already weakened areas of cities,
neighborhoods that no longer coveted by people with the luxury of choice…
(Blight does) not kill off (a healthy area it moves into a already abandoned area).
In cities liveliness and variety attract more liveliness; deadness and monotony
repel life… Socially…(and) Economically.
…streets which become so profitable for such a secondary diversity (such as) clothing shopping that clothing shopping becomes almost their exclusive use, decline as they are progressively deserted and ignored by people with other secondary purpose in mind.
Great Quote: To bring city streets and districts up to good operating conditions, and to keep them there, is a job that cannot be begun too soon. But on the other hand, it is also a job that is never over and done with, and never will be, in any given place.
The Conditions for Diversity on City Streets:
Condition 1: The District, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more then one primary function; preferably more then two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules able to use many facilities in common.
1)…people using the streets at different times must actually use the same streets.
2)…the people using the same streets at differing times must include, among them, people who will use some of the same facilities.
3)...the mixture of people on a street at one time of day must bear some reasonably proportionate relationship to people there at other times of day.
Condition 2: Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
[People walking to places will cut thru more parts of a neighborhood with short blocks and this leads to an increase in diversity- Improving street safety and helping small business.]
Condition 3: The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones.
[old buildings provide cheap rent for small and specific business, and different brackets of income, that in turn support the higher class or larger economy in the neighborhood. Also allows non chain stores to operate.]
Large swatches of construction built at one time are inherently inefficient for sheltering wide ranges of cultural, population, and business diversity.
Condition 4: The district must have a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purpose they may be there. This includes people there because of residence.
[A neighborhood would effectively max out on population at 275 dwellings per net acre. Too much density will result in the need for too many large buildings and will compromise condition 3]
Slums
[What makes a slum a perpetual slum is that too many people move out of it too fast-and in the meantime dream of getting out. The idea is that a slum stays a slum because anyone who becomes successful in life moves out. This can be applied to low income housing, where those who move up are pushed out. The transient population leads to a hood that can never blossom.]
…people who do stay in an unslumming slum, and improve their lot within the neighborhood, often profess an intense attachment to their street neighborhood… where attachment to a slum becomes strong enough to stimulate unslumming, that attachment begins before the unslumming. If people are going to stay by choice when they have choice, they must have become attached before that time. Later is too late. One of the early symptoms that people are staying by chice is a apt to be a drop in population, accompanied neither by an increase in dwelling vacancies nor by a decrease in dwelling densities. In short, a given number of dwellings is being occupied by fewer people… formerly overcrowded inhabitants who have become economically able to uncrowd are doing so in their old neighborhood instead of abandoning it. [Overcrowding is the hallmark of a slum]
Aesthetics
[Adding additional streets to the gridiron plan already in place in
many cities could cut larger blocks in half to not only generate
diversity but would create t-junctions to add a visual interruption.]
Not every street that terminates in a border need reveal this fact,
but some of them should, both to convey casual messages about the
whereabouts of the border-a form of orientation clue...
…to combat (border) vacuums… rely on extraordinarily strong counter forces close by. This means that population concentration ought to be made deliberately high (and diverse) near borders, that blocks close the borders should be especially short and potential street use extremely fluid, and that mixtures of primary uses should be abundant; so should mixture in age buildings. [Also soften borders by making them attractions]
[B]
Civic Centers
(Civic buildings should be dotted) within the workaday city, instead of assembling them into cultural or civic centers. In addition to the functional awkwardnesses and the economic waste of primary diversity that these projects cause, the buildings assembled into such islands of pimp are badly underused as landmarks. They pale each other, although each one, by itself, could make a tremendously effective impression and symbol of city diversity. This is serious, because we badly need more, not fewer, city landmarks…
[B]Streets
Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.
…if a city’s streets are safe from barbarism and fear, the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism and fear. When people say that a city, or a part of it, is dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks.
How successful streets handles strangers:
1) There must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space.
2) There must be eyes upon the street… The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
3) The sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers.
Thin smatterings of nonresidential uses do little good in gray areas [areas of low density zoned for residential] and can do harm, because gray areas are unequipped to handle strangers- or to protect them either, for that matter.
How bars, restaurants, and shops (public commerce) help street life:
1) Give people-both residents and strangers-concrete reasons for using the sidewalks on which these enterprises face.
2) Draw people along the sidewalks past places which have no attractions to the public use in themselves but which become traveled and peopled as routes to somewhere else; this influence does not carry very far geographically, so enterprises must be frequent in a city district if they are to populate with walkers those other stretches of street that lack public places along the sidewalk.
3) Storekeepers and small businessmen are great street watchers and sidewalk guardians.
4) Generate foot traffic that in turn is an attraction to still other people.
[people rarely use the center of a street when it is closed to traffic
except when crossing it. As a result, the advantage of a pedestrian
street is not more room but the ease at which you can cross the
street. Thus, we should worry less about closing streets off to
traffic, and more about calming traffic so that crossing is easy]
Traffic
Is it true that diversity causes traffic congestion? Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.
The problem that lies behind consideration for pedestrians, as it lies
behind all other city traffic difficulties, is how to cut down
absolute numbers of surface vehicles and enable those that remain to
work harder and more efficiently [less personal cars and more room for
trucks and busses]
...The more space that is provided for cars in cities, the greater
becomes the need for use of cars, and hence for still more space for
them [vicious cycle]
...a good many city streets (not all) need visual interruptions,
cutting off the indefinite distant view and at the same time visually
heightening and celebrating intense street use by giving it a hint of
enclosure and entity.
Parks
Conventionally, neighborhood parks or park like open spaces are considered boons
conferred on the deprived populations of cities. Let us turn this thought
around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and
appreciation conferred on them.
…in understanding park behavior… junk the false reassurance that parks are real
estate stabilizers or community anchors.
Unpopular parks… have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their
dangers spill over into the areas surrounding, so that streets along such parks
become known as danger places too and are avoided.
…neighborhood parks themselves are directly and drastically affected by the way
the neighborhood acts upon them.
(A good park is) busy fairly continuously for the same basic reasons that a
lively sidewalk is used continuously: because of functional physical diversity
among adjacent uses, and hence diversity among users and their schedule.
[A park in a mostly business zoned area will only be busy during lunch hours,
and a vacuum will exist at all other times. A park in a mostly residential zoned
area will be only busy for the hours before and just after noon for aprox. 5
hours as mothers and children use it, and a vacuum will exist in at all other
times. This vacuum will be filled by blight in the form of subversive people
using the park or no one using the park and it becoming a “dead zone”. Either
form of blight will repel liveliness and further ruin the park to newcomers and
users.]
[Many cities contain a focal point that needs or could benefit from a park. You can find such areas by looking for where people hand out flyers if legal.]
… there is no point in bringing parks to where the people are, if in the process the reasons that the people are there are wiped out and the park substituted for them… Neighborhood parks fail to substitute in any way for the plentiful city diversity. Those that are successful never serve as barriers or as interruptions to the intricate functioning of the city around them. Rather, they help to knit together diverse surrounding functions by giving them a pleasant joint facility.
General
People or users with more money at their command or greater respectability… can
fairly easily supplant those less prosperous or of less status, and commonly do
in city neighborhoods that achieve popularity [GENTRAFICATION]. The reverse
seldom happens. People or uses with less money at their command less choice or
less open respectability move into already weakened areas of cities,
neighborhoods that no longer coveted by people with the luxury of choice…
(Blight does) not kill off (a healthy area it moves into a already abandoned area).
In cities liveliness and variety attract more liveliness; deadness and monotony
repel life… Socially…(and) Economically.
…streets which become so profitable for such a secondary diversity (such as) clothing shopping that clothing shopping becomes almost their exclusive use, decline as they are progressively deserted and ignored by people with other secondary purpose in mind.
Great Quote: To bring city streets and districts up to good operating conditions, and to keep them there, is a job that cannot be begun too soon. But on the other hand, it is also a job that is never over and done with, and never will be, in any given place.
The Conditions for Diversity on City Streets:
Condition 1: The District, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more then one primary function; preferably more then two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules able to use many facilities in common.
1)…people using the streets at different times must actually use the same streets.
2)…the people using the same streets at differing times must include, among them, people who will use some of the same facilities.
3)...the mixture of people on a street at one time of day must bear some reasonably proportionate relationship to people there at other times of day.
Condition 2: Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
[People walking to places will cut thru more parts of a neighborhood with short blocks and this leads to an increase in diversity- Improving street safety and helping small business.]
Condition 3: The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones.
[old buildings provide cheap rent for small and specific business, and different brackets of income, that in turn support the higher class or larger economy in the neighborhood. Also allows non chain stores to operate.]
Large swatches of construction built at one time are inherently inefficient for sheltering wide ranges of cultural, population, and business diversity.
Condition 4: The district must have a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purpose they may be there. This includes people there because of residence.
[A neighborhood would effectively max out on population at 275 dwellings per net acre. Too much density will result in the need for too many large buildings and will compromise condition 3]
Slums
[What makes a slum a perpetual slum is that too many people move out of it too fast-and in the meantime dream of getting out. The idea is that a slum stays a slum because anyone who becomes successful in life moves out. This can be applied to low income housing, where those who move up are pushed out. The transient population leads to a hood that can never blossom.]
…people who do stay in an unslumming slum, and improve their lot within the neighborhood, often profess an intense attachment to their street neighborhood… where attachment to a slum becomes strong enough to stimulate unslumming, that attachment begins before the unslumming. If people are going to stay by choice when they have choice, they must have become attached before that time. Later is too late. One of the early symptoms that people are staying by chice is a apt to be a drop in population, accompanied neither by an increase in dwelling vacancies nor by a decrease in dwelling densities. In short, a given number of dwellings is being occupied by fewer people… formerly overcrowded inhabitants who have become economically able to uncrowd are doing so in their old neighborhood instead of abandoning it. [Overcrowding is the hallmark of a slum]
Aesthetics
[Adding additional streets to the gridiron plan already in place in
many cities could cut larger blocks in half to not only generate
diversity but would create t-junctions to add a visual interruption.]
Not every street that terminates in a border need reveal this fact,
but some of them should, both to convey casual messages about the
whereabouts of the border-a form of orientation clue...
…to combat (border) vacuums… rely on extraordinarily strong counter forces close by. This means that population concentration ought to be made deliberately high (and diverse) near borders, that blocks close the borders should be especially short and potential street use extremely fluid, and that mixtures of primary uses should be abundant; so should mixture in age buildings. [Also soften borders by making them attractions]
[B]
Civic Centers
(Civic buildings should be dotted) within the workaday city, instead of assembling them into cultural or civic centers. In addition to the functional awkwardnesses and the economic waste of primary diversity that these projects cause, the buildings assembled into such islands of pimp are badly underused as landmarks. They pale each other, although each one, by itself, could make a tremendously effective impression and symbol of city diversity. This is serious, because we badly need more, not fewer, city landmarks…