This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they must supplement each other in certain concrete ways. I think that unsuccessful city areas are areas wh

It is hopeless to try to convert some borders into seams. Expressways and their ramps are examples. Moreover, even in the case of large parks, campuses or waterfronts, the barrier effects can likely be overcome well only along portions of perimeters. The only way, I think, to combat vacuums in these cases is to rely on extraordinarily strong counte

We are accustomed to thinking of streets, or neighborhoods of streets, as divided into functional uses—entertainment, offices, residence, shopping or the like. And so they are, but only to a degree if they maintain their success. For example, streets which become so profitable for such secondary diversity as clothing shopping that clothing shopping

Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers. To any one person, strangers are far more common in big cities than acquaintances. More common not just in places of public assembly, but more

Mazes of coordination, conference and liaison tenuously connect these sprawling and randomly fractionated empires with one another. The mazes are too labyrinthine even to be kept mapped and open, let alone to serve as reliable and sensitive channels of interdepartmental understanding, or channels of pooled information about specific places, or chan

Among all the various kinds of buildings (old or new) in a city, some kinds are always less efficient than others in adding dwellings to the land. A three-story building will get fewer dwellings onto a given number of square feet of land than a five-story building; a five-story building, fewer than a ten-story building. If you want to go up far eno

What sorts of new street uses and street buildings are possible? The general aim should be to bring in uses different from residence, because lack of enough mixed uses is precisely one of the causes of deadness, danger and plain inconvenience. These different uses can occupy entire new street-side buildings, or merely the first floors or basements

But population size is vital because it represents, if most of the time only by implication, votes. There are only two ultimate public powers in shaping and running American cities: votes and control of the money. To sound nicer, we may call these “public opinion” and “disbursement of funds,”

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