Secondary diversity is a name for the enterprises that grow in response to the presence of primary uses, to serve the people the primary uses draw. If this secondary diversity serves single primary uses, no matter what the type of use, it is innately inefficient. Serving mixed primary uses, it can be innately efficient and—if the other three condit

The answer we long ago accepted went like this: The reason we need dwelling subsidies is to provide for that part of the population which cannot be housed by private enterprise. And, the answer went on, so long as this is necessary anyway, the subsidized dwellings should embody and demonstrate the principles of good housing and planning. This is a

No neighborhood or district, no matter how well established, prestigious or well heeled, and no matter how intensely populated for one purpose, can flout the necessity for spreading people through time of day without frustrating its potential for generating diversity. Furthermore, a neighborhood or district perfectly calculated, it seems, to fill o

If the only kinds of city neighborhoods that demonstrate useful functions in real-life self-government are the city as a whole, streets, and districts, then effective neighborhood physical planning for cities should aim at these purposes: First, to foster lively and interesting streets. Second, to make the fabric of these streets as continuous a ne

It is fashionable to suppose that certain touchstones of the good life will create good neighborhoods—schools, parks, clean housing and the like. How easy life would be if this were so! How charming to control a complicated and ornery society by bestowing upon it rather simple physical goodies. In real life, cause and effect are not so simple. Thus

You can neither lie to a neighborhood park, nor reason with it. “Artist’s conceptions” and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighborhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a nat

The most obvious of the three, although it is seldom called a neighborhood, is the city as a whole. We must never forget or minimize this parent community while thinking of a city’s smaller parts. This is the source from which most public money flows, even when it comes ultimately from the federal or state coffers. This is where most administrative

When sufficient people begin to stay in a slum by choice, several other important things also begin to happen. The community itself gains competence and strength, partly from practice and growth of trust, and finally (this takes much longer) from becoming less provincial. These matters were gone into in Chapter Six, the discussion of neighborhoods.

Attrition of automobiles operates by making conditions less convenient for cars. Attrition as a steady, gradual process (something that does not now exist) would steadily decrease the numbers of persons using private automobiles in a city. If properly carried out—as one aspect of stimulating diversity and intensifying city use—attrition would decre