Diversity In New York

Lewis Mumford, a famous American writer and historian, once said, “New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.” That is to say, New York is an exemplary city that holds the essential qualities and abilities a city should possess. It is an ideal model because it is a place bursting with potential, as well as endless opportunities, for its inhabitants to grow and thrive. However, although it is overflowing with excitement and opportunities, it manages to retain its excitement, rather than forcibly imposing it upon those who dwell in it. In addition, another key quality New York City is well known for is its ability to integrate. It is able to combine work, leisure, and culture, which allows the city to remain strong,
In the book, Jacobs stresses the goal of economic diversity, the richness of business ideas and opportunities that flourish in a city. “[T]he greatest single fact about cities [is] the immense number of parts that make up a city, and the immense diversity of those parts. Diversity is natural to big cities” (Jacobs, 143). New York City manages to bring together different uses in each area, so that no block is dominated by a single activity, trade, or occupation, but rather contains a diversity of buildings and businesses. A failure to bring together all the different activities that make up a city can undermine any sense of shared interests and common purpose. “The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets,” Jacobs argues, “the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity” (Jacobs, 111). The City’s success, both economically and culturally, is largely accredited to its diversity, as well as its liveliness and spirit. “Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves” (Jacobs, 448). However, although New York is extremely diverse, has high densities of population and activities, and has a mixture of primary uses, there is nonetheless an existent demarcation of public and private areas, which, according to Jacobs, further brands it an ideal model of a city. Jacobs writes, “Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects” (Jacobs, 35). She believes that there must be clear, noticeable separation of