Jane Jacobs Asserts That Art Essay

Koolhas's junkspace certainly paints a perfect picture of certain parts of Chicago where undifferentiated ethnic sprawl leads slovenly onto another and then onto another, often without demarcations being drawn and suddenly one finds one walking or biking onto the promenade running alongside the lake or staring up at the skyscrapers that have been squeezed and twisted into tight corners and loom down onto the twisting, careening streets beneath.

Chicago is tight on parking space and many of its narrow streets are one-way traffic only reminiscent of Koolhaas's junkspace since they give us the idea that they were added only as an afterthought with reverse one-streets added as recompense later -- scattered some distance away. Chicago's streets also sprawl and circulate oftentimes without warning ending up in blind sports seeming only to confuse the unwitting pedestrian. And then, as always, there are parks squeezed next to dirty pubs, and roads with huge gaps between one and the adjoining one so that a driver has difficulty knowing which direction to take, with the forks being unclear; but at times there are the reverse too with one road knotting onto the next and only after one has crossed does the driver discover he has taken the wrong direction.Points of convergence between Koolhaas and Jacobs are that both talk about architectural space and the need to fill it. Koolhaas sees space too as 'geometrical', something of configuration, a certain pattern, with surfaces, and movement, twists, and turns that need to -- and is -- filled in. In a similar way, Jacob too sees a city as affording opportunities for a vareity of structures of uses, and also sees a ciety as containing places of'murk' that are "shapeless and undefinable" (377), and that also need to be filled in. If left as are, Jacob similarly realizes that they can be readily filled in with junk. He, however, proposes that they be filled in with art. Only by doing so -- and here he converts junk into art -- can the city be turned into vitality. Both authors, in other words, see the city's inner spaces naturally regressing into junk. Koolhaas describes it; Jacobs calls for conversion into art.

City of Junkspace, as per Koolhaas, or City of design and deliberation, as per Jacobs, Chicago simultaneously merges both and it is in this that its intrigue and interest lies. Both authors have differing views, yet both illustrate Chicago to….....