5 ms·
While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Lif
by visakanv 12y ago
While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities":
> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:
> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of 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.
> And third, 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. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”
I love it. Simple, elegant.
Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!
- potatolicious 12y agoJane Jacobs' work is famous, but yet still under-appreciated, and her ideas IMO under-implemented. For the most part we're still stuck with half-assed bastardized versions of Le Corbusier's shitty ideas about the Radiant City, even though we've already seen terrible results from it across the board. One thing that disappoints me is that American cities are experiencing a huge resurgence in urbanism, but yet most of this comes in the form of isolated towers attached to parking garages, not any structures that would encourage street life or "eyes on the street" to any substantial degree. Huge apartment buildings are going up in "revitalized" downtowns throughout the country yet the streets are as ghostly and empty as ever.
- visakanv 12y agoYeah, here in Singapore I've witnessed several instances of really "Wait, why would you do that?!" urban redesign by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs, but it seems otherwise. (Stripping of street life because of regulations about painting old shophouses, etc)
- potatolicious 12y agoYeah, I'm at a loss explaining it too. I think part of it comes down to the fact that a lot of these places were never urban - they may have had big buildings but the people never experienced street life in the way older American cities - and most European cities - have experienced it (see: Boston, NYC). As a result urban planning is too much an exercise in theory and too little based on pragmatic experience. Another component is that Radiant City-esque designs look better on paper. You have tall, majestic buildings where architects can go wild without the constraint of adjacent buildings, and ample parkland appeals to our intuitive sense of what must be pleasant, but isn't in reality. In areas where urban decay has been especially problematic, these designs afford residents a sense of safety - they are safely ensconced in towers of glass and steel and may enter and exit with their cars. In many American cities avoidance of the street is sadly still a feature, not a bug.
- mc32 12y agoFrom what I've read, that is the case for Brasilia. Looks great on paper. They got to start from scratch in the middle of the jungle, kind of like Washington DC when L'enfant had similar blank slate. In any event, while Brasilia looked good and grandiose on paper, it was nowhere near human scale.
- dasil003 12y agoIt actually works surprisingly well in the residential "superblocks" because the apartment buildings are all raised on pillars so you can walk in a straight line between any two arbitrary points within a superblock, there are plenty of trees and parks, and the local commercial zones are easily accessibly by foot. But then when you get to the center with the bus station and government buildings it's a mass of huge roads and wide open spaces choked with exhaust fumes that's very unpleasant to walk around.
- patcon 12y agoWhile this didn't involve a currency, it reminds me of the concept of supplementary currencies, where a token is used to exchange an abundant resource for a scarce one, with better overall allocation. I supppse in this case, the resources were parking spaces and security. Luckily there was a coincidence of wants, and so no token was needed. Slum sanitation and bus tokens in Curitiba are the classic example of the sort of supplementary currency I mentioned, for anyone interested: https://books.google.ca/books?id=hBfQdF3EhXAC&lpg=PA142&ots=jSUG3u0fbI&dq=currency%20bus%20tokens%20garbage&pg=PA142#v=onepage&q=currency%20bus%20tokens%20garbage&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=hBfQdF3EhXAC&lpg=PA142&ots=...