Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Conditions for Diversity

Hello Everyone:

Before I launch into today's rant, I checked the page view count and to my stunned surprise, we're at nearly 1500.  Wow and thanks so much for your continued support.  I can't do this without you.  You're all the heart and soul of this blog.  We can do 1500.  I'll keep writing and you keep reading.

Today I'd like to return to the subject of Jane Jacobs' seminal book on urban planning, Death and Life of Great American Cities.  In the firs post, on July 17, 2013, I wrote on the subject, I looked at some general conclusions reached by Matthias Wendt in his article "The Importance of Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs to the Profession of Urban Planning." ( http://wwwsuapp.udel.edu/nvpa/home).  In the last post on he subject, I sketched out the profession of Urban Planning and American cities in the post-World War II years, the central theses of the book, and the foundations of modern orthodox urban planning.  Today, I'd like to look at the conditions for diversity outlined in the book.  Diversity is just about people, as it's commonly used today.  Diversity, in this case has to do with place making.  Ms. Jacobs laid four general conditions for diversity of place which take up the second part of the book.  They are: a district must serve more than one primary function; short blocks; buildings within the district must vary in age; a sufficient density of population.  These conditions, were/are considered by Ms. Jacobs to necessary for planning a diverse and vital city life.  One caveat, the can never be achieved by designers and planners sitting down and laying all out.  Great cities don't automatically generate diversity, it's an organic evolution.

The first condition, multiplicity of primary use is something that draws people together in a specific place.  Think about the places that bring you and your neighbors together.  According to Death and Life, not only is this necessary to ensure public safety in the streets and neighborhoods but also have economic relevance.  My first thought is the ubiquitous mall.  They have multiple functions of retail, commercial, and entertainment.  From an economic point of view, well, I don't think I need to go into great detail, do I.  Mr. Wendt uses the analogy of the park and shops to make his case.  Just as local parks need people in the immediate for a variety of functions, shops are dependent on foot and automobile traffic for their livelihood.  It's a pretty simple equation, if there are no customers, there is no business.  Similarly, the shops are dependent on the workers in the area who contribute their demand to the variety of goods and services.  When I think about this, the first thing that comes to mind are the shops and restaurants that service the Downtown Los Angeles area.  

Conversely, Jane Jacobs describes the insufficient primary mixture of uses as a shortcoming of American postwar American downtowns.  In the pre-war period, downtowns fulfilled all four general conditions for creating diversity in place making.  By the time Death and Life was written, downtowns had become place solely dedicated to 'work' that they came to be referred to as Central Business Districts.  The urban central core has a direct impact on other parts of the city, the primary mixed-use of the downtown is particularly important because, according to Ms. Jacobs, "a city without a strong and inclusive heart, tends to become a collection of interests isolated from one another." (Jacobs, 1961, p.165).

The second condition for urban diversity is short blocks.  Why short blocks?  Ms. Jacobs uses the city of Manhattan to illustrate her point.  As a native Angeleno, all the images of Manhattan I'm familiar with is of people, lots of people, walking.  Yet, in the example given, Jane Jacobs describes the long, 800-foot blocks on West Eighty-eighth street in Manhattan a having a tendency to segregate the regular users of one street from the regular users of another, isolating neighborhoods socially and economically.  Forgive me, but, again as an Angeleno, I'm having a little difficulty reconciling this with the image of throngs of people on the streets of Manhattan.  Her conclusion is that this impedes the exchange of people between different streets.  Ms. Jacobs recommends offering residents alternative routes to chose from.  Matthais Wendt points that Jane Jacobs opposed the concept of the Garden City plan, first developed by Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier's Radiant City plan, opening that plentiful street are wasteful.  Jane Jacobs argues that short blocks and frequent streets are valuable because they allow an intricacy of cross-use among the users of the city neighborhood.  The connection to the first condition of diversity, a mix of primary use, is that short blocks are useful in encouraging a real mix of people and experiences that contribute to the carnival of urban life.

The third condition for urban diversity, a personal favorite (no bias here), is a melange of building of different ages.  Ms. Jacobs notes that cities need a combination of old buildings in a good state of rehabilitation and run-down buildings because they can accommodate most ordinary enterprises, necessary to public streets but not able to pay the high overhead costs.  Further, even new businesses that can afford new construction still need the older buildings around or risk falling into a bland uniform environment.  I can't help but think of the spirited defense of the Bowery made by director Martin Scorese.  In a blog post dated April 24, 2013, I wrote that I agreed with the Oscar-winning director when he asserted that the introduction of high-rises and condominiums into the Bowery would create an atmosphere of conformity to an area that has historically resisted conformity.  Conversely, if there is a district where there are uniformly older buildings, it conveys the impression that commercial entities and he residents are unable to support and attract new businesses.  The exception being, of course, designated historic districts.  The points here is that Ms. Jacobs is arguing for a balance of old and new construction that create a panoply of cultural, population, and business experiences, thus contributing to urban diversity.

The final general condition for urban diversity is a sufficient density of population.  While traditional planning advocates low-dwelling densities.  Opposing this, Ms. Jacobs argues that high dwelling densities are an important factor for the vitality of an urban environment.  To demonstrate her thesis, she points to high-density residential districts in U.S. cities such as: Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Brooklyn Heights in New York, and Boston's North End.  The overcrowded slums, that high density and traditional planning theory bring to mind are, according to Ms. Jacobs, actually vital thriving areas, while the real-life slums of America are found in areas of low-density dwellings.  However, high density dwelling by itself is not enough to attain urban vitality if diversity is suppressed by other other insufficiencies.  To wit, the housing projects that were popular in the the mid-twentieth century.  If dwelling densities are too high, then they begin to repress diversity.  At a certain point, building typology standardization sets in so that it creates that bland uniformity that seem to be increasingly characterizing our cities today.  Ms. Jacobs concluded that people gathered in concentrations was not a bad thing, rather it promoted a richness of experiences, differences, and possibilities.

Jane Jacobs' concept of urban physical diversity encouraged neighbors to interact with each other and discourages crime, everyone gets to know and trust each other-"eyes on the street."  This was not embraced by planners and sociologists in the mid-twentieth century.  The idea that lack of physical diversity having an undesirable effect on social behavior which could be resolved by building in a more physically diverse mode was also reject as to simplistic.  Sociologist Herbert Gans postulated that the majority of the American middle class did not want a vital and bustling neighborhood such as the North End. Instead, they preferred the peace and privacy  found in low-density neighborhoods and high-rise apartments.

What about present times?  If you examine the mega-master plans on the books for cities such as Los  Angeles, Silver Spring, New York, and Denver, they seem to be making an effort to find a balance between the traditional urban planning thinking and the theories of Jane Jacobs.  It'll be interesting to watch and see what happens in the next ten to twenty years as our urban regions continue to grow.

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