“- Would you have three hundred strangers in your
neighborhood?
- Fuck yes, it’s called city dwelling, you fucking buckets.”
“Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers. To any one person, strangers are far more common in big cities than acquaintances. More common not only in places of public assembly, but more common at a man’s own doorstep. Even residents who live near each other are strangers, and must be, because of the sheer number of people in small geographical compass.
The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among all these strangers.”
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, p30.
Quotes about the impossibility to define “the city”
Weber: The many definitions of the city (have only one element in common)
(What he actually says is, the city may be defined in many ways – the same that St Paul says about God. Theologians have taken St Paul seriously.)
Simmel: In the same way, a city consists of its total effects, which extend beyond its immediate confines.
Park: A sociological definition of the city must accept the fact that such a complex phenomenon cannot sufficiently be characterized by any one characteristic, or with a combination of formal and random characteristics.
Benjamin: The city is uniform only superficially.
Canevacci: The city presents itself polyphonic from the first encounter.
La Cecla: The city is not only that which we know, but the reserve of unknown that we know to exists, and which calms (or disturbs) us for the fact that we may come to know it.
Jacobs: No single element in a city is, in truth, the kingpin or the key. The mixture itself is kingpin, and its mutual support is the order.
Kostof: Cities never rest; they resist attempts to explain them neatly … in the end, the truth about the city is mobile.
Founding elements of the city:
1. Impossibility to define : you may try to define what a/the city is, but it is too complex a phenomenon to be characterized unequivocally or formally. The city resists attempts of clear definitions.
2. Essential plurality/ multiplicity: The city is polyphonic, a mixture, a self-contradictory multiplicity and its uniformity is only superficial.
3. Extension: The city extends over the visible; over its own proper boundaries and over all that is immediately present and visible. The city includes what is strange to it.
Weber: The many definitions of the city (have only one element in common)
(What he actually says is, the city may be defined in many ways – the same that St Paul says about God. Theologians have taken St Paul seriously.)
Simmel: In the same way, a city consists of its total effects, which extend beyond its immediate confines.
Park: A sociological definition of the city must accept the fact that such a complex phenomenon cannot sufficiently be characterized by any one characteristic, or with a combination of formal and random characteristics.
Benjamin: The city is uniform only superficially.
Canevacci: The city presents itself polyphonic from the first encounter.
La Cecla: The city is not only that which we know, but the reserve of unknown that we know to exists, and which calms (or disturbs) us for the fact that we may come to know it.
Jacobs: No single element in a city is, in truth, the kingpin or the key. The mixture itself is kingpin, and its mutual support is the order.
Kostof: Cities never rest; they resist attempts to explain them neatly … in the end, the truth about the city is mobile.
Founding elements of the city:
1. Impossibility to define : you may try to define what a/the city is, but it is too complex a phenomenon to be characterized unequivocally or formally. The city resists attempts of clear definitions.
2. Essential plurality/ multiplicity: The city is polyphonic, a mixture, a self-contradictory multiplicity and its uniformity is only superficial.
3. Extension: The city extends over the visible; over its own proper boundaries and over all that is immediately present and visible. The city includes what is strange to it.
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