The Death and Life of Great American Cities Chapter Summary & Analysis | Part 4, Chapter 22, The Kind of Problem a City is

Part 4, Chapter 22, The Kind of Problem a City is Summary and Analysis

Cities have different kinds of problems that must be approached and handled in different ways. Time brings with it new ways of thinking, and new strategies. Dr. Warren Weaver, writing in the 1958 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation, defines "three stages in the history of scientific thought: (1) ability to deal with problems of simplicity; (2) ability to deal with problems of disorganized complexity; and (3) ability to deal with problems of organized complexity" (p. 419). Jacobs fits the development of city planning into this framework.

The first category consists of problems that contain two variables and applies to the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All of the physical sciences made advances during this time. Jacobs makes an analogy between the parts of a city and the variables in physical science. They react in the same way. Some parts function well; others do not. Jacobs uses the example of...
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