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Cynthia PerezProfessor GlassmanMHC 25002/12/12Affidavit of Jane JacobsMy name is Jane Jacobs. I am the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, named one of the 100 most influential books by the Times Literary Supplement in 1995, which critiques modernist and rationalist urban renewal policies, that instead of helping inner-city communities to flourish, actually destroy life in these said communities. I am not an urban planner by profession, but I have invested many years of self-interest into learning and garnering a great understanding of planning and urban design. Using this knowledge, I believe that rationalist urban planner, Robert Moses, has destroyed great neighborhoods, such as East Tremont section of the Bronx, with his various and wide spread projects. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I use Greenwich Village as my prime example for healthy urban design and my example against the effects of Mr. Moses’ projects in East Tremont and other neighborhoods. In order to be successful, a city, or in the case of East Tremont, a neighborhood must be able to generate diversity, through four conditions: 1. The district must be able to serve more than one primary function, in which these functions generate the presence of people at different times and for different purposes, while using the same streets and facilities; 2. The district must have short blocks; 3. The district must have a variety of buildings that range in age and condition from old and worn to new; 4. And they must have a sufficiently dense concentration of people, including residential and commercial reasoning. As I say in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, all four are needed in combination in order to generate city diversity and allow for sustentation of civilization, and Greenwich Village follows all of these conditions, and so did East Tremont prior to its downfall caused by Robert Moses. East Tremont was not a slum, as Mr. Moses considered it to be. East Tremont was a successful neighborhood. In order to attack the issues of urban renewal that affected the East Tremont section of the Bronx, I will go through each condition one by one. The first condition, the need for mixed primary uses, was seen in East Tremont. For example, I state in my book, that parks require that people in the immediate vicinity that differ in purposes. That park in East Tremont was Crotona Park, a park that was a fundamental part in the lives of its citizens. However, with the building of the Cross Bronx Expressway, families on the north side of the Expressway found it difficult to get across to Crotona Park, which was on the south side. If families could not reach the park, then parks lose their use and slowly the entire city lost its primary usages and its ability to generate diversity. Mixed primary uses allow for the spread of people at different times of the day, as long as the use the same streets and facilities. If there is the loss of facilities, in this case being Crotona Park, it makes it much more difficult to create the spread of people throughout the day, and without the spread of commerce and residence, the economy begins to fail and then the neighborhood begins to fail. Mr. Moses’ Cross Bronx Expressway essentially promises a new residential area. However, with a new residential area, there are plans to bring in more daytime primary work uses and the resulting land clearance will clear out. As a direct effect of these two problems, there will be more workers but a contrastingly small number of residents and inconvenient conditions will further become intolerable. If the worker-to-resident ratio is disproportionate, that also leads to a much more difficult to create the spread of people throughout the day. In Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, the conditions that people had to live with, including reports of living in rock dust and trembling buildings, had become intolerable. My next point is that there is a need for small blocks, in other words, “streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent”. If a street is self-isolating, then it is constricting its ability to be economically sufficient. Long blocks (and expressways in East Tremont’s case) self-isolate and thwart any economic potential. In my book, I cite Chelsea as experiencing slum-clearance, which is what East Tremont experienced, and a result of that slum clearance, it was endowed with self-isolating blocks. It did not experience its predicted renascence because it was lying behind the barriers of these long blocks. What long blocks do is prevent the simple need to interact and prevent the effective spread of people.To make a quick point on the third condition, Mr. Moses destroyed 54 apartment buildings that varied in age and condition. The reason why this variation was important to the neighborhood of East Tremont is because they vary in economic yield and allow for the mingling of different people at different times of the day. By razing these buildings, Mr. Moses once again has thwarted a neighborhood’s ability to prosper economically and generate diversity, as people had to leave homes and businesses. He also ended up destroying the architectural diversity of the neighborhood and thus homogenized a once vibrant streetscape. Homogeneity hurts the vitality of a neighborhood, as it creates an oppressive and depressive monotony. East Tremont was a dense city of 60,000 prior to the expulsion created by the Cross Bronx Expressway. The density of the neighborhood allowed for the possibility of people with different purposes to interact and spread at different times; it allowed for people to turn corners frequently on the short blocks; and they lived in the varying building that made up East Tremont. It was a bustling place prior to the Cross Bronx Expressway. However, the Expressway stripped that of East Tremont. According to Caro 5000 people were removed after Mr. Moses evicted them, but those 5000 residents were part of a now broken community. I wish not to bring down Robert Moses. All I wish to do is to stop his future projects. If this means convicting him for his crimes, that would achieve my goals. I hope that one can see that I have put much thought into how great East Tremont of a neighborhood was, how it was not a slum and how it could have continued to be successful before Mr. Moses’ Cross Bronx Expressway. ................
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