HW #2 Intro to THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES

In the introduction of the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, she explains the main purpose of the book and her ideas related to the conventional way of planning cities; she does not agree with the current ideas of planning and rebuilding cities.
She tells the reader her ideas of how understanding social and economic behaviors is the main part to create a successful city, instead of just focusing on the appearance or how to get money out of the project. According to her, the main points she is going to write about are the most common, ordinary things such as the importance of sidewalks, jobs, and the difference between what is consider to be a flourishing city and a “slum”.
She mentions how investing money in a city is not the solution to make it better, in some cases such as Morningside Heights area in New York, which went downhill after it was supposed to be reconstructed by the government; however North End was the opposite, it is consider to be a slum by a lot of people but unlike Morningside Heights, people in the neighborhood had reconstructed the city by their own, without any external help and now it is a pleasant city to be. These and more examples were given to show the reader how the cities are suffering because of bad planning ideas.