Elkin and Jacobs Comparisons

Jane Jacobs conveys to us a very interesting story on how city streets seem to be healthier in general for the public than projects or suburbs. In her story she conveys ideas of how city streets have people loitering on steps, shopkeepers glancing about streets, and multitudes of other people generally being active among the roads. However, Jacobs indirectly lampoons the projects, making statements on their anti-social habit forming nature. In her arguments in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs, to paraphrase, says “Open, grassy parks and physically small, private complexes encourage bullying” (Jacobs P.78). This argument correlates with Lauren Elkin’s tale of life between the city and suburbia, connecting with Jacobs on the idea that suburbs offer too much space between people; a far-too-great disconnection from each other in comparison to the ‘togetherness’ and tight-knit community feeling that city life provides. Elkin mentions a brief word of how street performers dressing at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are leagues scarier than the older days when religious lunatics would scream of eternal damnation. This small anecdote could be interpreted as safety being easier to achieve with the known dangers, which would be a religious fanatic, than it would be with the unpredictable people who stand on streets in character costumes, their intentions and identities unclear. Overall, both speak of how suburbia and projects isolate people from each other, while cities encourage a diffusion of interaction and diversity to expose people to one another, dispelling rumors and stereotypes as people could see for themselves the behavior or those they might have once been prejudiced again.