Study What Works

Posted by on May 29, 2006

Get people attached to their neighborhood before it is too late. That was the urgent advice of Jane Jacobs in her Interview in 2002 with the Active Living Network.

How can you improve neighborhoods so that people want to be be there? Jacobs recommended such simple things as tree planting, traffic taming, and putting in markets at the right time.

She urged city makers to study the parts of the city that work and the parts that people use. "The proof of the pudding is how the people use them, or do they use them. You learn what you can from those, and there is a lot to be learned."

Jacobs was asked if Is it possible for cities to model each other. "One size doesn?t fit all," she replied. "And the greatest asset that a city or a city neighborhood can have is something that?s different from every other place. But one thing leads to another in cities?that?s how it is with all organic things. And spontaneous. I guess spontaneous is another name for self organized."