Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #10: Building Creates Close-grained Weave of City Fabric? NO

This is evaluation item #10 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Building Creates Close-grained Weave of City Fabric? NO

(Click on any picture in this post to see it enlarged. This one a close up section of a photo in the current Municipal Art Society annual report.)

Jane Jacobs calls for cities to be constructed with intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support both economically and socially. Atlantic Yards, and the Ratner Metrotech and the Atlantic Centers do not incorporate such close grained and intricate features.

JJ Cites: [ The need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support both economically and socially. P. 14 Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow. P.72 . . . . fifty-seven acres of mostly grass, dotted with playgrounds and devoid of city street, a prime breeding ground of delinquency in that city. P.77 Furthermore, a city matrix needs its own less spectacular internal minglings (“jumbles to the simple-minded). P. 174 Only intricacy and vitality of use give, to the parts of the city, appropriate structure and shape. P.377]

(Municipal Art Society rendering showing scale using photgraph of neighborhood- Original Aerial Photograph by Jonathan Barkey.)