Jane Jacobs was concerned with the problems of city planning and the strategy that planners followed throughout most of the twentieth century. The strategy of rebuilding has not been successful. It has not accomplished anything in eliminating slums or halting the decay of city neighborhoods. Jacobs blames not only the city planners but places the burden of the blame on the theorists and educators.
Red Harvest presents a literary image current society as greedy, power-hungry society. The main villains are not the gangsters but wealthy influential people who use thugs to defend their often ill-gotten wealth and the power derived from it. Similar to Jane Jacobs’s idea, 'slums' are not only undeveloped part of the city or town, but also places where ill-minded people live
Building-16, Koh, Myung Keun, 2007, From the collection of: Korean Art Museum Association
“You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.” (Jacobs)
Though city planners placed new parks and shops, people were still trapped in their own boundary.
A Practice of Behavior 2009- 54 Tables in library SN.7-012, Kwon, Sunkwan, 2005, From the collection of: Korean Art Museum Association
"When people say that a city, or a part of it, is dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks" (pg 30). She points in the very beginning of the book, "If a city's streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull,the city looks dull" (pg. 29)
The Dark Figure, Federico Castellón, 1938, From the collection of: Whitney Museum of American Art
“Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it." (Hammett, 153)
The nature of a man changes with immoral conduct. Villains, city planners, theorists, and educators see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. they are all blindfolded.
[The Mucha Bawn, or the Old Citadel of Lucknow], Felice Beato, Henry Hering, 1858 - 1862, From the collection of: The J. Paul Getty Museum
The Op goes to "Poisonville," a mining town in Montana modeled on Anaconda or Butte, which is famously described as "an ugly city of forty thousand, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains." (Hammett, 4). If 'poisonville' exists in real life, this may look like this.
Crown, Ewe, 1900 - 1950, From the collection of: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Elihu Willsson owned a United States senator, a couple of representatives, the governor, the mayor, and most of the state legislature. He was Personville, and he was almost the whole state. (Hammett, 8)
The town being the personal property of one man, a power-hungry individual takes over a town and by gaining monopolistic control over everything. He manages to suppress those important ideological ideas of the USA of democracy and citizen involvement.
Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze, 1851, From the collection of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jacob believed a slum cannot be replaced with high yield projects as this does not overcome problems which created the slum in the first place. Instead the slum is redistributed amongst other districts. Jacobs proposes that the key in un-slumming a slum is in stopping people leaving the slum too fast. If a sense of community is strong enough, residents will more likely stay and overtime develop their homes and neighborhood.
Study of Perspective - Hong Kong, Ai Weiwei, 1995/2003, From the collection of: MoMA The Museum of Modern Art
Jacobs pointed out the errors of city planning. These errors were not new errors, for the most part. They were repeats of errors that have been made for hundreds of years. They were not the fault of the city planners; they were the fault of the theorists. Jacobs was not so much attacking the people who do the planning as she was attacking the educators who teach the planners. Jacobs totally disagreed with their policy of tearing down and slum shifting.
‘Poisoned, corrupted-to-slum-ville’, corruption in Personville is not something that can be fought with law or morals. As the Continental Op says to a fellow operative: ‘Anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty’ (p. 117).
Martin, Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself, Martin Kippenberger, 1992, From the collection of: MoMA The Museum of Modern Art
If theorists, teachers of city planners peek back their hasty decisions or at least tried to listen to what others say, they may have seen the colorful picture instead of looking at the corner just like this piece of art. They chose to look what they were facing without realizing the whole different view behind their back.
Continental Op was sent to get rid of the ill-minded people out of the town, who made Personville to Poisonville. Such a corrupted village is not as different as a slum.
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