Personally, I did not like the writing of Katz regarding “What is an American City?” for at least three reasons. These reasons are his credibility, his style of writing and the topic of which he was discussing. The last reason might seem a little unfair but that’s the honest truth.
The first problem I had with this reading by Katz is his credibility as a writer. Now I do not doubt his credentials or anything like that, truthfully I don’t care if he has a PhD or something like that because you don’t need a degree to be intelligent. However, I doubt whether or not I can believe what he’s writing as a valid opinion. The reason for this is because in the very first paragraph he straight out praises Jane Jacobs to know end. He goes out on a limb to say she deserves to be “patron saint of Urban Studies”. This to me implies that he thinks way too much of her work to in my opinion to present us with a fair explanation of what an American city is.
The second big problem I had with this reading is his writing style. After he claimed that Jacobs deserves to be crowned patron saint of urban studies he goes on to talk about how much she appreciates Jacobs’s work. However, I feel it would’ve been more effective to write away talk about Jacobs’s work instead of your own personal opinions. In other words I feel that as Katz was writing this he was doing it in a way, which included himself far too much. I feel like his writing would’ve been better had he not brought himself into the discussion too much and it would’ve been better if he distanced himself a bit.
Lastly, is the topic for which he was discussing. This is an unfair thing to say because in a way it’s kind of hypocritical to be calling him out on being biased in his writing when I’m being biased by saying I didn’t like his work when in fact it was just the topic that I didn’t like. The topic of urbanism per se, or defining a city is rather boring to me and I feel like as I was reading it I just kind of trudged through it barely able to absorb most of it. So, I feel that although it might be a bit bias I didn’t like the reading just because the topic seemed rather boring to me to an extent.
Finally, although it might be a little hypocritical on my part for being biased I have to say that I just didn’t like the reading too much. Mainly I didn’t like the reading because I wasn’t sure if he was so believable because of his interest in Jacobs and because of his writing style where he included himself too much in the writing. So, that being said if it was another topic I might’ve been able to get passed my initial problems with the reading, I feel the only reason I was such a critic is because I didn’t like the topic he was writing about.
