Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs's 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities was criticised by many of the modernist planners and architects of the time, Paul Ritter included. He called her a "muddle-headed influence in planning" and declared that she should never have had the chance to put her ideas forward. Her book was a "shallow analysis of planning problems" and she undermined the best planning practices by taking no account of changes to the car, to the environment and to the modern city. He ridiculed her "confused thinking" and insistence upon streets and small blocks over the superblock for which he was an advocate:
She denounces the superblock as if it had to act in a frustrating way to citizens on the move with its more extensive and traffic-free path areas. She describes only bad use of this principle: "these streets are meaningless because there is seldom any active reason for a good cross-section of the people to use them." This merely means that a path system must make meaningful and plentiful connection with the surrounding areas, satisfying 'desire lines' and giving opportunities for creative additions and citizen-participation.
Read more about this topic: Paul Ritter, Philosophies and Ideas
Famous quotes containing the words jane and/or jacobs:
“Natural law is only whatever happens in your lifetime within fifty miles of you.”
—“Marcy.” As quoted in The Girl I Left Behind, Introduction, by Jane O’Reilly (1980)
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)