Years after Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her theories are being applied to dities across the country. Just this week, the blog Twin City Sidewalks applied her observations to some neighborhoods in Seattle and Portland:
"Jacobs’ small block advice crossed my mind on a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. At first glance, my hometown of Minneapolis has a lot of similarities with Portland, particularly in its housing stock, age of development, density and mixed-use characteristics. Yet many older neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest have smaller block sizes that you will find in the Midwest. For example, the average block size in Southeast Portland or Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood is less than 100 meters square, whereas most of the blocks in South Minneapolis or Chicago’s North Side are nearly twice as large. While walking through any of these neighborhoods, block size is not necessarily something you might notice, I think that the size difference has a few subtle effects".
Below are some airial views of our cities of the semester. All pictures are to the same scale--you can see the scale in the bottom left corner. One mark equals 200 feet, or about 2/3 of a football field. Small blocks? Big Blocks? You decide.
