I absolutely love when Jane Jacobs writes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities that “Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.” In other words a city must take chances in order to thrive and bounce back from failure. She then goes on to write that in this “laboratory,” we should learn from success and failure. This lays out a very important factor to the growth and development of a city. In fact, without it, a city will die.
Failure is not death, though. Even if a city does not live up to the standards of society, many cities still have a lot going for them. Jacobs talks about the North End in Boston quite often. A Boston planner she knew talked about the North End as if it were a slum, but when he went on to describe it, Jacob saw no reason in such a classification. The planner stated that the area actually has “among the lowest delinquency, disease and infant morality rates in the city,” and it has “the lowest ratio of rent to income in the city.” This tell me that there is more to a city than we think and that we should invest more time and hope into such places as the North End. In addition, like Liz Langer said in a previous post, every city is unique, specifically because of how its people personify it.
This idea is carried throughout Tyler Anbinder’s Five Points. The area is misunderstood. And although Lewis Mumford, in The City in History, might disagree, as Liz also pointed out, money is not what is going to help it be understood. After reading only the prologue of Five Points it is clear that the area had become a mix of cultures, some of which came together and others that clashed, as well as evolving ideas and movements that define it. This particular degree of prejudice should be removed before we undermine a city.
