Woodward Park and The Use of Sidewalks

I read both of these stories and it seems to me that they are closer to campaign speeches or a town council meeting than essays. In Woodward Park, Murphy Davis talks constantly about how the city of Atlanta is trying to make itself look better at the expense of people in the city that should be helped. This essay is the most like a campaign speech because Davis criticizes the current mayor about his overhaul of the Park to keep homeless people out and make the city feel "safe." Her passage on the city's renovations to make way for the Olympic games in 1996 remind me of another city that did some "changes" when they had their Olympics. And that city would be....Berlin, Germany in 1936. Atlanta tore down numerous buildings and displaced a great number of underprivledged citizens so that the Olympic Centennial Park (which looks really nice according to some of the pictures that I have seen of it) could be built. In Nazi Germany (1936), the government decided to remove any signs of Nazi activity such as the Gestapo and anti-semetic signs in the city so that their Olympics would take place without interruption and avoid controversy. Of course that was not avoided when Jesse Owens won a large number of medals for the USA and Hitler refused to put on Owens' medal.
ANYWAY, where was I? Oh, yeah. This story reminded me of that because Davis's thoughts on the city's work. "The park and surroundings are being redeveloped, not because Atlanta wants to cultivate public space, but because the world is coming to town, and Atlanta wants a clean facade; the "garbage" will be swept under a rug temporarily. (308)" Towards the end, Davis intensifies her dislike of the mayor's work when she emphasizes her ideas of reviving the parks and making it so that people feel welcome in Atlanta. This ending emphasis showed the tone of this essay. I believe that even if she was not writing this for political purposes, although I think she was writing this for the Open Door Community (if you read the small exerpt before the story), I think she wanted the people of Atlanta to realize what is happening to the city and the "improvements" that are taking place are actually hurting the city. On a side note, this city sounds a lot better than Los Angeles in Jacobs's essay.
In The Use of Sidewalks, Jacobs introduces the fact that sidewalks and streets are the main part of a city which makes sense if you think about it. Without sidewalks, people would have to walk in the streets and without streets, theres no where to walk, drive, or move. Well what about waterways like rivers? That's not the point because we are talking about dry land here. I did not mind this part of the essay because it was informative but it was not overly aggressive. Once Jane Jacobs begins to list statistics, then I thought that she was being more textbook than persuasive or informally informative (if that makes sense). Overall, she hates Los Angeles. That is clear to see. If you were in Los Angeles and knew about all the problems they had in you didn't have to live there, wouldn't you hate it too? Now personally, what scared me a little bit is the fact that Philadelphia made one of the lists for high crime. Forcible rape is the 2nd or 3rd highest in Philly. Now I would recommend that any girl going to Philadelphia anytime soon should first buy at least one of these items: pepper spray, a flail, or a taser. Flails are much cooler than the other two. But overall in L.A, you need your own set of bodyguards to feel safe according to Jacobs. They are the highest in forcible rape, major crimes overall, aggravated assault, and probably some other wonderful categories. Jacobs says that LA is this bad is because their streets are bad. No one can say that the streets of LA are not bad because there is even a video game out there called Streets Of LA, where you go around either shooting people, get shot at, or steal stuff (Much like Grand Theft Auto to be honest).
To prevent this kind of thing from happening in other places, Jacobs suggests a neighborhood watch in towns. She gives a lot of recommendations and all make valid points. I know that my town has a neighborhood watch and I know that because there are signs everywhere on my street for it. My town is a lot safer than Los Angeles, but since we have Bloomsburg University, it may not be necessarily that safe. Not to hurt BU's image, but there are a lot of frat parties off campus will lots of alcohol. I live about two blocks from a bar and I continually see college students returning from it walking down the middles of streets still half-drunk. But overall, we are a safe town. In Jacobs's town, she has a neighborhood watch and explains a situation that I wish that she had not mentioned. There was a struggle between a man and a little girl and people were coming out of their houses or businesses to intervene when necessary. The problem with this is that the girl was the man's daughter. Now if that family lived in that town, you would think that SOMEONE would have realized that, "Hey, I've seen those two together before. Maybe their related." But no, instead the entire neighborhood made a big scene out of it and probably drove those two away from that town forever, if they lived there or not. Personally, if I went outside everytime I heard or saw something questionable, I would pitch a tent in my backyard. I don't have the best neighbors and they prove that on a regular basis. I do not want to go off on a tangent again, so I will stick with what Jacobs is trying to say. Cities are not safe because their streets are not safe. That makes sense and making sense feels good.

Now let's see how many times it takes for the word verification to finally work?? Any bets?