Straight from a manhole and into the hustle and bustle of the city, Giselle is introduced to what could be a place of happily ever after or happily never after in Disney’s 2007 film Enchanted. Undoubtedly, there are various perspectives and connotations surrounding a city and all of its contributing aspects. For Giselle, one of these persistent characteristics is that of a police officer or person of authority of whom is present on the streets as she embarks on her journeys between New York City and Andalasia. While Disney offers a vision of a city with prominent authority figures, not all views agree on this aspect. Jane Jacobs, a journalist and activist, offers a clear example of a slightly different model that has had a significant influence on community-based city building (“Who Was Jane Jacobs?”). In her opinion, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody” (“Who Was Jane Jacobs?”). In her critique of urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs makes a strong argument that the city streets are patrolled most effectively by the eyes of locals and strangers rather than that of policemen and authority, but the argument would have been more well-rounded if she had considered the importance of police in relation to the bystander effect.
A city consists of a magnitude of features, but the first things that usually come to mind are the buildings, businesses, streets, and sidewalks. To Jacobs, one of these stands out more than the others: the sidewalks. In the simplest of terms “a city sidewalk by itself is nothing,” and that has proven to be true throughout Jacobs’s critique (Jacobs 29). Throughout the chapter, Jacobs acknowledges multiple contributing details as to what makes a city safe. The primary factor of this is that “there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street” (Jacobs 35). The “eyes” that Jacobs’s discusses are what transform a sidewalk from nothing to something very important. If nobody watched over the streets and their sidewalks, everything and anything could occur in the city and all order would be lost. This point alone is a major contributor to Jacobs’s critique of how a city should be planned. The sidewalks must go hand in hand with the presence of eyes, meaning that there must always be somebody there to watch the ongoing activity. Without this, there is no realistic possibility for safety within the city.
Eyes on the street is a general term for those who watch over the city streets, but whom they belong to is the most critical requirement. Jacobs specifically addresses this in the “natural proprietors of the street” point of her argument (35). This refers to the eyes of homeowners and business owners that have either economic or emotional investments in the city. This distinction of whom the eyes belong to is the main reason as to why this method of safety works. If the people within the city and on its streets were not invested in it and its well-being, the likelihood that they would care about the safety of the city would decrease drastically. With ties and investments to the city, the city itself becomes like a home to these individuals whom Jacobs refers to as the “natural proprietors”. These types of people are “great street watchers and sidewalk guardians if present in sufficient numbers,” because of their relationship with the area (Jacobs 37). This is crucial because it is common sense that one would have a greater desire for safety if they were strongly tied into the given place themselves, much like one is to their home. The importance of these individuals only comes when their homes exceed the limits of the walls of their apartment or townhouse. When this occurs, these individuals are the keepers of peace and order in the city in the most direct of ways.
Without argument, the eyes of invested people play the largest role in the protection of a city, but this is only possible under the specifications that their buildings are aligned to face the street, the streets are well lit, and that there are additional people on the streets in order to create activity. Building alignment and lighting are more so considered basic concepts, but the most complex of these specifications is the need for additional people on the streets. Bluntly, this is due to ongoing activity. However, ongoing activity consists of many things. Most commonly, “stores, bars, and restaurants…work in several different and complex ways to abet sidewalk safety” (Jacobs 36). These work to pull people into the city but also to furnish areas without public areas along the sidewalk with individuals. The latter works as long as the public places, such as the shops and restaurants previously mentioned, are in close enough proximity to the areas without any attractions. Much like the actual street itself, this works to give people reason to use the sidewalks as streets to get from one place to another. If the attractions were too distant from the barren area, people simply would not use that street. It would be out of their way and there would be quicker, easier ways to get to their desired location. All in all, these businesses give people reason to be on the street in the first place. Just as Jacobs states, “A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street” (34). This technique works purely because an area of activity with people attracts more people, which creates an ongoing cycle of eyes to watch the streets.
Much like a sidewalk being nothing by itself, eyes are nothing by themselves. The availability of eyes goes hand in hand with another specification that “there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space” (Jacobs 35). The demarcation allows those who keep the city safe to become aware of where to focus their attention. In the words of Jacobs, this is to “secure streets where the public space is unequivocally public, physically unmixed with private or with nothing-at-all space, so that the area needing surveillance has clear and practicable limits” (36). To explain, a public park would require more surveillance while a private apartment building would not. If there was no distinction between the two, the surveillance would be ineffective and time would be wasted.
Only once the orientation of buildings, lighting, and the demarcation between public and private areas are put into action can a street be “well equipped to handle strangers” (Jacobs 40). According to Jacobs’s argument, strangers are one of the completing pieces of what enables the city to be safe. The streets must be used by those other than the locals. With both locals and strangers being drawn into the city street or merely people watching, there is a balance of eyes. Given that those who are invested keep primary watch, they would not be able to maintain their personal courses of action if there were not many others on the street. Such a combination is what permits there to be little to no people appointed to solely watch the streets and make sure that they are safe. Together, the locals and strangers create a cycle. There are shopkeepers and businesses to draw in people, people to draw in more people, and as a result, a supply of eyes is present. Therefore, “Strangers become an enormous asset on the street…particularly at night when safety assets are most needed” (Jacobs 40). Plainly, it allows for safety in numbers and it creates unity between locals and strangers. As Delany mentions, this is the “intricate self-policing web Jacobs claims is our greatest protection against street-level urban barbarism,” which demonstrates the unison between both of their viewpoints on this topic (Delany 154).
Thus far, Jacobs’s argument has presented crucial information, yet it begins to fall short when she discusses the role of police in safety. Jacobs mentions that “no amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down” (32). From her perspective, the eyes and unity within the city have stronger power than that of more police officers or authority figures. She says this because in the most serious of situations, police and authority themselves cannot do anything. Jacobs supports this by referencing dated public housing projects that face high turnover (32). She states that “such places are jungles” because “the keeping of public sidewalk law and order is left almost entirely to the police and special guards” (Jacobs 32). Rather, Jacobs believes the main power should be held exclusively in the hands of the community members. They are the only figures that would be able to make a substantial change because they are invested in the area more than any policeman or similar figure. In fact, the power of unity almost outweighs police completely. While this can be true in some cases, this argument fails to consider other situations, like those involving the bystander effect.
Crime is inevitably present in some way, shape, or form in every city, no matter how safe the city is perceived to be. In consideration of where said crime is coming from, Jacobs mentions that an important question about cities is “How much easy opportunity does it offer to crime?” (33). One way to offer such an easy opportunity to crime is by not considering all the obscure ways in which crime can manifest itself, like with the bystander effect. With this, the opportunity for crime may come directly from the city protectors themselves. As discussed by Ken Brown in his TED Talk, the bystander effect communicates that when one is in a larger crowd, they are less likely to receive aid or assistance from others (TEDx Talks). In the case that the individual is to receive help, studies show that the time it takes to intervene is dramatically lengthened. This is partially a result of the diffusion of responsibility among the individuals present. This means that if more people are present, each person feels that they are less responsible to take any action and step in and help. This connects to Jacobs because she proposes that a city needs to have plenty of people at all times. So, the possibility of diffusion of responsibility is great. Brown discusses such a case of the bystander effect in a city with the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered within a city while over 35 individuals were witnesses but did not intervene (TEDx Talks). This perfectly reflects the presence of diffusion of responsibility.
In such a case, the presence of police would have undoubtedly been beneficial to Kitty Genovese or anybody in a similar situation. Rather than fall victim to diffusion of responsibility or the bystander effect as a whole, a police officer would take immediate action. A self-policing community can only do so much to protect those within it. It can certainly maintain basic safety but, in the case where that safety is broken, a police officer is better equipped for the job. The answer to the issue of safety within cities is not to solely rely on either the eyes of those invested or on an army of police officers. Rather, the solution is within a mixture of the two. The community provides the most basic sense of safety for itself and the strangers that come through, but the presence of police officers reinforce that safety in ways that normal citizens could not. Along with many other things, the members of the community do not possess the ability to arrest or detain individuals as police officers do. Therefore, it seems that a team effort between the communities and police officers would work to smooth out all issues. The community would serve to control safety as much as possible, but police officers would fill in the gaps if a situation were to become too serious. Consequently, the combination creates a more perfect unity within cities.
As a whole, Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities offers a concise and reasonable method for accomplishing safety within cities. Her reasoning is that those who are invested in the city will serve as its ultimate protection in the event that the qualifications of building orientation, lighting, distinction between public and private areas, and the existence of strangers are met. Yet, by looking into the psychology behind the bystander effect, it is clear that the presence of police officers would be a beneficial addition to the existing community as they provide types of assistance that the community is unable to provide.