Jane Jacobs

One thing that really interested me in our class discussion was the talk about what Jane Jacobs thinks about the night life of a city. She talks about how the night life such as bars and clubs have become mainstream in the city. The bars and clubs are very popular with young adults.
With so many young adults going to clubs and bars in the city it leads to marketing. The gathering of the young adults leads to marketing of alcohol, drugs, sex, tobacco, and even marketing of themselves. With all of the different trends all coming together in the city, the different trends will blend and cause certain fashions to excel. Jane Jacobs criticizes the way that these trends and fashions are marketed. She talks about the zones of marketing and how they tend to pop up in night life. This seemed very interesting to me because I am a young adult and soon will be going to bars and clubs and I want to see how these places are portrayed.

Something that I found interesting in the reading by Jane Jacobs was when she talks about the streets and sidewalks being the major component of the cities. I never realized that the streets and sidewalks are really what a person thinks about when they hear the word city. Jane Jacobs talks about how if the streets and sidewalks are busy then the city is thought to be a busy city. She talks about how people think that cities are unsafe if they are uncomfortable when walking down the sidewalk. After reading this I began to realize how true all of the things that she pointed out were true.
http://pictures.exploitz.com/busy-times-square-photo-New-York-City-_smgpx10001x15658x18270ef3a.jpg
In this picture you can see how the busy street and sidewalk makes the city seem very lively and busy. This picture is of New York City at night time. Granted, New York City is a very well known busy city, but without all the cars and taxis in the street and the people walking on the sidewalks, the city would be boring and slow. New York City is not a dangerous place, the people that live there are the ones that are dangerous. Jane Jacobs backs up this opinion because she talks about how people are what make a city.

industrial revolution

In class we discussed the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution there was the exploration age. This was mostly European based. The Europeans discovered "The New World" (USA). One thing that I was really interested in about the Industrial Revolution was the concept of the cottage industry becoming the factories. I never really thought about the way that factories were created and now it makes sense that they were created through the cottage industry. The three main things that were done in the cottage industry were spinning, weaving, and carding. All three are different ways to make clothing and other cloth things. The factories took these things and supplied the cloth and thread and had large groups of people work in one building and make the clothes. One thing that professor brought up was that now we are not producing our own products we are selling our work (wage labor). I am excited to learn more about how the industrial revolution helped to build up cities.