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Essay / Jane Jacobs New Urbanism - 754
Although it was drawn from older ideals, it was a way of looking at cities in a way that valued people and gave them the opportunity to establish community connections and feel comfortable within the community. communities. The focus on “walkable neighborhoods…something of the charter” allowed for greater civic engagement among community members and allowed people to get to know their neighbors and families around them rather than running to get in their car and covering a distance too far to walk. Another large part of the claims of the New Urbanism was that most theorists saw the need for diversity in the uses of commercial and non-commercial relationships. This alludes to the ideas of Jane Jacobs in her ideas about what diversity entails in a city and urban area, when she asserted that "something is about buildings requiring variation in their uses, their principal uses." She said it was necessary for buildings to have a variety of uses and ages, which seems to be part of the ideals of the New Urbanist movement. It provided for economic and social diversity, which Jacobs advocated for a community to succeed. As a whole, the New Urbanist movement was one that, although the country didn't know it was needed, was. At the time, suburban and urban areas were losing their appeal and people were growing tired of automobile-oriented communities. The problem with New Urbanism was that it was not an entirely new idea.