unslum all neighborhoods
Jane Jacobs (1991), the great American urbanist, was the first to define a slum as a place where people didn’t want to stay. She observed that when people decided to stay and invest in a place, improvement began. Our work, she argued, is to understand this natural process and to support its unfolding. In the practice of urban restoration, helps to create the city we want to see. (Fullilove, 2013, 38-39) This involves acknowledging the pain of unexpectancy; reknitting weak ties; and investing in the places where we want to stay. (Fullilove, 2013, 169) Jane Jacobs (1991, 271) wrote, “We need to discern, respect and build upon the forces for regeneration that exist in slums themselves, and that demonstrably work in real cities.” (Fullilove, 2013, 190)