Activity Two - Zachary

Jane Jacobs, on page 14-15 of The Life and Death of Great American Cities, writes: "It is futile to plan a city's appearance, or speculate on how to endow it with a pleasing appearance of order, without knowing what sort of innate, functioning order it has. To seek for the look of things as a primary purpose or as the main drama is apt to make nothing but trouble."
My fear as I was traveling to Yankee Stadium was that I would find a deserted, desolate stadium surrounded by closed shops dedicated entirely to selling Yankees shirts and caps. I expected to encounter few people on the sidewalks and, at best, high speed traffic passing by on a major street or two. How, I wondered, could a project like Yankee stadium not be entirely given over to appearances without any consideration given to the use of the area by the surrounding residents? Maybe it was the long-standing hatred of the New York Yankees that my father instilled in me from a young age, but I thought that I was set to discover a nightmare in urban design. What I found surprised me.
Yankee stadium is massive. It covers an area bordered by 164th street to the north, 161st street to the south, Macombs Dam Bridge and Jerome Avenue to the west, and River Avenue to the east. My expectation that the area would be deserted of pedestrian traffic was compounded by the fact that I went on Valentines day, a holiday where few people seem likely to travel to Yankee stadium just to stare at it, and on a day when the stadium had no particular reason to exist or be used, being a there was no game.
Strangely, design or by accident, the area around the stadium was a perfect example of a mixed-use urban area. Consequently, I found a large number of pedestrians walking around the stadium. This is fully in line with the conclusion that Jane Jacobs reaches on pages 36 of the aforementioned book: "[stores, bars and restaurants] draw people along sidewalks past places which have no attractions to public use in themselves but which become traveled and peopled as routes to somewhere else..."
The block of River Avenue that runs along the stadium is lined with stores. Following it down a bit further I found stores selling Yankees paraphernalia, as well as a multitude of restaurants. Following 161st street east took me past delis, restaurants, a bank, and a large courthouse. Most of the stores along the street housed apartments or offices in the floors above.
164th street further proved the usefulness of mixed-use development for creating pedestrian traffic. Just north of the stadium I found Mullaly Park which was entirely devoid of people. In spite of the lack of interest in the park, there were still people walking along 164th street. Given that they were carrying shopping bags, my belief is that they had been shopping on the other side of the stadium and were walking to the apartment complexes along Jerome Avenue.
I sat on a bench located in Babe Ruth Plaza (the large sidewalk area between the entrance to the stadium and 161st street) and watched people until I discerned two distinct groups of people. Most pedestrian traffic seemed to be composed of people that actually lived near the stadium. They traveled mostly alone or in pairs, ignored the stadium, seemed to have some kind of purpose and direction, and showed evidence of having been shopping (carrying bags or pushing carts). Groups of what I believe to be tourists composed the rest. They mostly came in families (parents and children), gawked up at the stadium, and took lots of pictures.
It is significant for understanding the effect mixed-use development has on the neighborhood to realize that most of the people on the street are not there for the stadium itself, but for the surrounding businesses. If most pedestrians were tourists there to see the stadium, it would be difficult to conclude that mixed-use development has impacted the pedestrian traffic in the area. However, given that most people seemed to be walking around to shop or eat, I concluded that mixed-use development in fact produced pedestrian traffic around the stadium.