http://www.sppa.udel.edu
Hello Everyone:
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Jane Jacobs
futureofny.org |
The other day I started reading
Death and Life of Great American Cities, the seminal book on urbanism by the late Jane Jacobs. I'm not deep into the book but already what she's written about neighborhoods makes absolute sense. Jane Jacobs was a community activist and writer in the late fifties, early sixties New York. Her book was a reaction to the effects of post-World War II American urban renewal. Ms. Jacobs attacked what she believed was the "orthodox" approach to city and regional planning, rebuilding, and chronicles the failures of the modernist planning ideas. I was thinking about my blog post from yesterday as I was reading. I thought to myself "I wonder what she would say about the mega-master plans of today?" Jane Jacobs argues that the various foundations of planning history, through the late fifties, all suffer from the misconceptions of how cities work. Like the author of an article published by Matthias Wendt for the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware, "The Importance of
Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs to the Profession of Urban Planning," I also believe that the ideas put forth in her book still have relevance today, especially in the face of a growing urban population.
First some background. Jane Jacobs evolved her ideas in context to the postwar period when American cities were in a state of crisis. The United States experienced an unequaled period of prosperity during the fifties. The increase in automobile manufacturing and sales along with federally subsidized highway building made very easy for people to move out to the suburbs and commute to and from urban centers. In terms of community development, this was a disaster. The cities were perceived as a dirty, noisy places with dubious (read ethnic and racial minorities) people. "White flight" of the middle class was joined by an influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico fleeing poverty and "the great migration" of African Americans looking for a better life. Added to this, among the benefits the returning soldiers received was federally subsidized mortgages that allowed them to buy homes in newly built housing estates. This resulted in the downward spiral of American cities.
However, the federal government did not completely neglect American cities. In conjunction with the think and act big approach of the postwar prosperity mindset, Congress passed the Federal Housing Act, which allocated larges sums of money to build public housing for the urban poor. This heralded the beginning of the master plan. Across the country whole blocks, defined by planners as "blighted," razed and replaced with monolithic high-rises. At the same time, municipalities were drawing up their own master plans in an effort to revitalize downtown areas. The public housing projects were celebrated as the panacea for all the urban ills. Housing people in high-rises was considered a big step forward economically and aesthetically. In place of the dark tenement houses, people were now being housed in apartments that were well lit and ventilated. The projects were built around grassy areas where children were supposed to play like their suburban counterparts.
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The Blairs
sasaki.com |
As an associate editor for the
Architectural Forum in New York wrote about several urban renewal projects, observing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal efforts. What Ms. Jacobs observed was that while the new housing was appreciated by planners and architects, they actually had no connection to the way people
actually lived. This got me thinking about the mega-master plans I wrote about yesterday
(historicpca.blogspot.com/2013/07/if-you-love-or-hate-master-planning.html). On paper they all sound very utopian but what connection do they actually have to way people really live and use the space? For example, proposed master plan for The Blairs in Silver Spring, Maryland. I wrote yesterday that the architects, Sasaki and Bing Thom Architects, endeavor to create a housing development that has a human scale to it. Meaning, in place of the monolithic towers, the design teams would create smaller residential blocks that are complemented by commercial spaces and open green spaces. Yet, I can't help thinking how would this relate to the people that live there. Would they patronize the commercial spaces (eg. restaurants) and make use of the green space? Jane Jacobs questioned the basic premises of modern city planning in place since the end of the Second World War.
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Model of Broadacre City, Frank Lloyd Wright
franklloydwrighttour.com |
Death and Life of Great American Cities challenged the dominant theory of decentralization that most planners shared in the sixties. Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City (1932) was the extreme case of decentralization. Frank Lloyd Wright argued that the cities were much too crowded and Americans wanted to live in lower densities. In
Design with Nature (1969), author Ian McHarg made a similar argument but was improperly located in the ecosystem. American sociologist and historian Lewis Mumford's equally important book,
City in History, also attacked the metropolis as cultural disaster and advocated creating new towns in the country. Jane Jacobs make the opposite argument, Americans should have never left the city.
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The Radiant City, Le Corbusier
morrischia.com |
Jane Jacobs' central theses of
Death and Life of Great American Cities can be summed neatly with one statement, "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding..." Ms. Jacobs attacks the methods, objectives, and results of orthodox planning principles and methodology. She blames the modernist principles of planning, exemplified in Le Corbusier's Radiant City, for the giant slabs of housing projects that aggravate the problems of the residents. The projects are characterized by their unending dullness, uniformity, and isolated from the vitality of the city they're located in. In this case, the developers, of the proposed housing and transit projects I profiled yesterday seem to depart from the this orthodoxy. The overarching objective in each case is to connect the master plan to the city so that the place does not become an island in the urban ocean. What would the deity of orthodox master planning Robert Moses have to say?
To understand how cities work, Jane Jacobs used inductive reasoning and close observation of city life. She regarded inductive reasoning as an activity that anyone can engage in. Ordinary interested citizens, using their own observations, have an advantage over urban planners, educated in deductive theories instead of experiential understanding. By making empirical observations, Ms. Jacobs was able to see how cities, specifically the Greenwich Village area where she lived, worked in real life. This makes me wonder if the master planners from yesterday's blog used the personal observations of the current residents as a basis for their schemas. Ms. Jacobs was not so much concerned with the physiognomy of the city or how to make a city pretty, rather, she was more interested in how a city works. The key thesis of the book is the idea of a combination of interrelated mix of uses, buildings, and people. Jane Jacobs writes, "This ubiquitous principle is the need for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they must supplement each in certain concrete ways."
So far,
Death and Life of Great American Cities is an enlightening read and I'm very happy that I have a chance to finally sit down and read it. I'll be coming back to this book as I move along. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in planning theory. Don't worry about the fact that it's over fifty years old, the theories put forward in the text still have relevance today.
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