Broken Windows Theory

The Theory of Broken Windows

• Disarray and crime are inherently linked and can create an upward spiral in a community
• Social psychologists and police officers acknowledge if a window in a building gets broken and isn't fixed then other windows will soon be broken too
• Vandalism occurring on a large scale in certain areas isn't because of the inhabitants' nature, but because an unrepaired broken window indicates neglect, so breaking others doesn't matter
• Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, published the result of experiments verifying the "broken windows" theory in 1969
• Zimbardo parked a car without license plates and with the hood open in a street in the Bronx and a similar car in a street in Palo Alto, California
• The car in the Bronx was vandalized in ten minutes
• A family stole the radiator and battery from the car
• Within 24 horus everything of value was extracted
• The demolition started randomly and windows were broken, components were torn to pieces, and upholstery was ripped
• Kids started using the car as a playground
• Most adult vandals were white well-dressed people

Palo Alto Experiment

• The car in Palo Alto remained intact for over a week
• Zimbardo then smashed part of it with a sledgehammer, and soon passersby started imitating him
• Within a few hours the car was overturned and completely destroyed
• Again the vandals were predominantly respectable white people
• Unattended goods become targets for people looking for entertainment or plunder
• The vandalism starts well before even the Bronx given the anonymity, frequency of car abandonment, theft and destruction, and past experiences of neglect and indifference.
• In the sedate Palo Alto, people know private property is guarded and rebellious behavior is costly

Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix

• For Delacroix, history isn't an example or guide for human action, but a drama that began with humanity and lasts into the present
• Contemporary history is a political struggle for freedom
• It is the first political painting in the history of modern painting and celebrates insurrection, which ended the white terror of the restored Bourbon monarchy in July 1830
• Liberty is both the idea of Liberty and the nation of France, where "in the name of Liberty-Fatherland" the working class and the bourgeois in top hats seal their sacred union

Artistic Style of Liberty Leading the People

• It is not a historical painting and does not depict an exact event, but there is an allegorical figure; there is no allegory beyond the figure of Liberty-Fatherland
• It is a realistic painting that culminates in a rhetorical tirade
• The allegorical figure is a mix of realism and rhetoric: an idealized figure that, for the occasion, has dressed in the rags of the working class and holds an ordonnance rifle instead of the symbolic sword
• Characterizing social figures demonstrates that boys, young people, adults, workers, peasants, intellectuals, legitimist soldiers, and rebel soldiers are all people and everyone is made brothers by the tricolor
• Delacroix’s romanticism proposes making art a thing of its time, no matter the cost

The Structure of Roman Cities

• Roman urban planning derives the urban planning of the Greek-Hellenistic period
• Streets are generally straight and arranged in a grid, parallel to the two main road axes: the cardo maximus in the north and the decumanus maximus from east to west
• The two main axes corresponded with the four city gates
• Rome, was not arranged like this, as it was born from the union of various settlements on the hills and in the adjacent valleys
• The Roman grid formation is, however, found in cities built and in the military camps that later became towns
• Some modern cities retain the Roman name of castrum (military camp)
• The forum, the city's main plaza, political, religious, and administrative center opened at the meeting point between the cardo and decumanus

Roman Homes

• The layout of houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum are well known to historians
• Pompeii and Herculaneum disappeared during the terrible eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, the first under a blanket of ash and lapilli, the second under a large mudslide
• The houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum, in particular, show how the ancient cities looked, due to not undertaking transformations over the centuries
• The simplest type of Pompeian house, with none or few windows on the street, is arranged around a courtyard (atrium), in the center of which the rainwater was collected; above is the opening of a compluvium (a square basin (impluvium))
• All around is a portico where one can go to the rooms of the house (cubicles)
• At the back of the atrium, facing the main entrance, is the tablinum (the family's most sacred room and the place where they receive guests)
• From here one goes to the hortus (the garden surrounded by columns, peristyle)
• The dining room (triclinium) is next to the tablinum complete with three beds placed on three sides of the table

The Stones of Venice

• When dominion of men was first asserted on the ocean, three thrones, far superior in importance to all the others, were imposed on its sands: the thrones of Tire, Venice, and England
• Only memories remain of Tire, ruin remains of Venice, the third power, England, is the heir to Venice’s greatness,
• Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy, and was the most powerful state, but there were periods of nominal subjection
• Venice’s state existed for 1376 years from the first foundation of a consular government on the island of Rialto until the general in chief of the French army in Italy declared the Venetian Republic a thing of the past

Governance of Venice through the years

• 276 years were spent in nominal subjection to the cities of ancient Venice, especially Padova, and in an agitated form of democracy where the executive powers seem to have been entrusted to tribunes, each chosen from among the inhabitants of each of the main islands
• For 600 years, as Venice’s power grew, its government was an elective monarchy, since its king, possesed at least in the early days an authority independent as any European sovereign’s authority, then gradually subjected to limitations, and hemmed in almost daily in its prerogatives
• The last government of the nobles, under the semblance of a king, lasted 500 years, during which Venice reaped the fruits of its previous energies, consumed them, and expired

Raphael's Trip to Florence

At the end of 1504, Raphael, seeking important public commissions, came to Florence and to Pier Soderini with a letter of recommendation written by Giovanna Feltria, duchess of Sora, widow of Giovanni Della Rovere, lord of Senigallia and prefect of Rome

• There Raphael had the opportunity to stay and study the period's most fertile and fascinating moment in Florence history
• The undisputed protagonists of this happy and vital season were Leonardo and Michelangelo, like others were returning to Florence in search of the coveted opportunities that Soderinf seemed to grant

The Emblem of the Republican Intelligence by Michelangelo

• Raphael admired Michelangelo's David for its republican sentiments
• He was shown the wall of Palazzo Vecchio's Salone del Gran Consiglio, the wall where Leonardo and Michelangelo were expected to fresco the Battle of Anghiari and the Battle of Cascina
• Sometime after Raphael also saw the Universal Judgement frescoed by Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli in where Fra' Girolamo Savonarola had lived

The Declining Role of Pigments

• One of the clearest indicators of the decline the use of gold
• Gilding is clearly not naturalistic: gold leaf on a flat surface does not resemble a three-dimensional gold object

Alberti on Gilding

• Alberti warns its appearance changes depending on how it reflects light
• He urges the painter to render gilded surfaces, such as brocades, using pigments and skill, not the metal because the marvel and praise belong more in color
• The Conversion of Saint Hubert of the workshop of the Master of the Life of the Virgin of Cologne is a transition example between medieval gold backgrounds and the more naturalistic use of gold.
• The artist is already taking over the value of the materials.

Artistic Example with Gold

• The crowns of kings in the Adoration of the Magi by Vincenzo Foppa are attributed the exaltated gilding by the red glaze, but the rest follows the Renaissance style.
• The beam of light in Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation with Saint Emidio that strikes the Virgin's forehead is gold leaf to remind people the celestial ray is otherworldly.
• The main suppliers in 16th century spice-shops are more economical

Color Usage in 15th-16th Centuries

• In 1471, in Florence, Neri di Bicci paid good azurite two and a half times more than a good green ("green-azure", probably malachite), a good red lacquer and a fine yellow lacquer ("arzicha")
• The giallolino cost ten times less than the azurite, and the biacca even one hundred times less
• Ultramare is ten times more expensive
• The color was enormously varied, with an incidence in color choice

The Ideal of Certainty

• Science is not a system of certain statements, or a collection of facts, but we can only guess what and how it works, though not be certain about knowing the end results or truth
• We're guided by non-scientific, metaphysical faith in laws and regularities that we can discover
• The way science is pursued today is through, per method of argument, hurried and premature prejudice
• None of our anticipations are supported dogmatically, instead we attempt to overthrow them

The Path of Advancing Scientific Method

• Progress can occur in two ways by collecting new perceptive experiences by improving previous experiences though that misses the mark because it implies too close the industrial collection
• Progress is in large measure to those among us that subject their ideas for possible rebuttals because careful experiments are inspired by them if we are to answer something from/about nature

"Unitariness"

• “Unitariness" political comes from diverse factors related to ethnicity and culture
• Italy already existed, which aided their language, the desire for similar politics, and to unify despite differences because regionality, and small power among regional lords led to corrupt systems due to lacking moral fibre

The Broken Windows Theory posits that visible signs of disorder and neglect, like broken windows, can lead to more serious crime and vandalism. The theory suggests that addressing minor issues can prevent the escalation of crime in a community. Experiments by Philip Zimbardo support this idea.