Thursday, April 2, 2009

Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card #16: Will There Be a Concentrated Diversity of Use? MAYBE NOT


This is evaluation item #16 (of 47) of the Jane Jacobs Atlantic Yards Report Card

Will There Be a Concentrated Diversity of Use? MAYBE NOT

Jane Jacobs suggested that diversity of use needs to be sufficiently concentrated in a close area so that people need only walk to get most of what they needed. Not doing so, she argued, would put people into their cars. Atlantic Yards has a mixture of uses, office, retail, residential and the arena. The arena and the catchment area for its attendance are on a scale that puts it outside of this local balancing of concentration. The retail is proportionately small to the residential. How well it could serve is uncertain but one would hope that neither Metrotech nor the Ratner Atlantic Centers operations would be examples.

JJ Cites: [Lack of wide ranges of concentrated diversity can put people into automobiles for almost all their needs. . . In dense, diversified city areas, people still walk. . . P. 130]

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