Theory Critique

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urban writer and activist who championed neo-traditional, place-based, community-centered approaches to planning. Her most well known treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is considered one of the most influential American texts about the workings and failings of cities. Broadly read by both planning students, professionals and the general public, the book is a strong critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s. She claimed urban renewal practices destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. She was a strong advocate for the abolition of zoning laws and restoration of free markets in land, which would result in dense, mixed-use neighborhoods.[1]  She approached cities as living ecosystems and suggested that buildings, streets, and neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms and over time, they respond to how people interact with them.[2] Each element of a city from sidewalks to parks, neighborhoods, government, and even the economy, function together synergistically. Challenging the ideals of both modernism and Robert Moses’s urban renewalist approaches, her 1961 masterpiece continues to inspire generations of urban planners and activists, and have served as foundations and subtext of new approaches to planning, particularly that of New Urbanism. I would argue however, that todays’ new urbanists have perhaps exaggerated the intent of Jacobs original critique and have failed in their new developments, which attempt to express nostalgia, but in truth actually feign urbanity.

Main Points

Physical design and diversity represent paramount aspects of Jacob’s offerings of good urban design.  Among the agenda of the urban renewalists, the most prevalent is the separation of uses. Jacobs claimed these policies destroyed communities and economics by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Instead she advocated “four generators of diversity”:

“To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two...

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there...” [3]

Along with rejections of modernism in planning, Jacob’s harsh view of “slum-clearing” and high-rise housing projects was influential. She concluded that this modernist approach is often inadvertently a method of social and economic exclusion.

“Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: "This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn't be on the street!" That judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home.” [4]

She argues against the patronization of slum dwellers into a better life, and that the social problems of slums must be overcome through understanding and respecting the forces for regeneration that inherently exist in slums rather than proposing a “band-aid” solution like failed modernist housing project such as St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe. Jacobs maintains that low-income projects often become even worse centers of social hopelessness than the slums that they were supposed to replace.

Furthermore, Jacobs strongly opposed the rigidity and division of cities into uniform, low-density, singular-use districts, and conversely that design standards for streets and buildings that would promote interaction within the public realm has been too lax. She summarizes these flaws of rigidity in cities as permitting monotony and unnecessarily repressing natural diversity.[5]

Cities, she believed, should be untidy, complex and full of surprises. Well-designed cities encourage social interaction on the street and are pedestrian friendly. Walking, biking, and public transit are favored over cars. Low-rise residential buildings with stoops and porches encourage neighborly communication, and allow for “eyes on the street” which helps make neighborhoods safe as well as supportive. Livable neighborhoods need mixed-use buildings with corner stores, newsstands, pocket parks, and winding sidewalks where people can meet casually. Cities, she believed, should foster a mosaic of architectural styles and heights. And they should allow people from different income, ethnic, and racial groups to live in close proximity.[6]

The Impact on New Urbanism

 Jane Jacobs’ theories have had profound effects on planning approaches since her time. Her emphasis on the functions of streets, mixed uses, building communities for people, walkability, etc. was adopted by organizations such as the Congress for the New Urbanism. New Urbanism combines two movements found in architecture and planning. The first is often referred to as neo-traditionalism; it focuses on using urban design and planning to promote a sense of community. Like Jacobs, new urbanist’s believe the loss of community in suburban sprawl causes all varieties of social ills. Recommended design standards such as sidewalks, front porches, parks, community centers, and other common areas, all aim at encouraging person-to-person interaction. The second movement focuses on the relationship between land use and transportation; auto dependency leads to congestion, pollution, obesity, etc.. To remedy this, new urbanist planners borrowed Jacobs’ recommendations of higher-density, compact cities that mix housing with retail and commercial, and encourage pedestrian friendly uses.[7]

To promote the crusade of New Urbanism, its advocates oversold the concept, promising it could solve every urban social problem. If you are a commuter, New Urbanism will reduce traffic congestion. If you have health problems, New Urbanism will clean the air. If you’re worried about your children’s education, New Urbanism will improve the schools.

Conclusion

Although many planers, developers and elected officials still favor the top-down planning approach in lieu of Jacobs favored community based bottom-up approach, still planners and architects have absorbed Jacobs’ lessons. Advocates of “smart growth” and new urbanism claim Jacobs’ mantle, although she would no doubt dispute some of their interpretations of her theories.[8] Unfortunately, on the surface level, New Urbanism and bottom-up planning is merely addressing a single symptom of a much deeper-rooted socio-economic problem. Without contest, the work of Jacobs has contributed to city living being rehabilitated and revitalized; she advocated the preservation of older buildings specifically because their lack of economic value made them affordable for poor people. In this respect, she saw them as guarantors of social diversity.[9] Yet today, an unforeseen consequence of her ideas has resulted in many distressed urban neighborhoods experiencing gentrification. In places like West Greenwich Village, the very factors that she argued would maintain economic and cultural diversity have instead led to gentrification and some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Furthermore, bottom-up planning cannot easily be applied to cities of varying scales. With the world’s population increasing more rapidly in urban areas, issues of infrastructure need to be explained, and transportation issues not ignored.

While I don’t agree that New Urbanism contains all the solutions to societies’ problems, the fundamental concepts of their crusade and of Jane Jacobs’ is critically important.  So, as new urbanists may have made Jacobs the planning tenet, I don’t think this can be taken at face value. New Urbanism can often fool us into believing it is the savior of urbanity when in reality it is a pretty veil over common suburbia. Instead, I would offer that perhaps it’s time for the veil to be lifted and to look at these concepts not at a case-by-case basis, but rather as an overarching framework.

[1] "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Wikipedia. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.
[2] Project for Public Spaces, Jane Jacobs, http://www.pps.org/reference/jjacobs-2/
[3] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 155.
[4] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 55.
[5] Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 237.
[6] Drier, Peter. Jane Jacobs' Radical Legacy. NHI.org. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.
[7] Town, Stephen. Reason: Crime-Friendly Neighborhoods. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.
[8] Drier, Peter. Jane Jacobs' Radical Legacy. NHI.org. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.
[9] "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Wikipedia. Web. 29 Sept. 2012.