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| Republican National Convention 2016 Cleveland, Ohio en.wikipedia.org |
It is Day One of the Republican National Convention and we already had a "few incidents." Ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich call out the Bush family for being "childish" and Trump campaign manager Paul Manefort derided Ohio Governor John Kasich for acting "petulant" for not coming to the Convention. (http://www.bbc.uk.co) There was at least one attempt to "unbind" Donald Trump's delegates and allow them to vote their conscious. If that was not enough, there was a near-rebellion over a vote on Convention rules. The call for a full vote on rules was refused. (Ibid) Throughout the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, yours truly will bring you a daily summary of events. Hold on to your hats, it is going to be a wild ride. Alright on to today's subject, WWJJD.
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| Lower Eastside Historic District New York City, New York cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com |
WWJJD. What would Jane Jacobs do about the issues facing contemporary cities? It is a question that seems apropos to ask this question on the first day, of the first week of nominating conventions. Over the course of the campaign, thus far, we have heard calls for border walls, stalled Supreme Court nominees, fears of terrorism but nothing about cities. Alright, there was Senator Ted Cruz's snarky comment about "New York values." Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow rightly point out in their CityLab article, "What Would Jane Jacobs Do," "...a national agenda in this century must be an urban one. Two-thirds of the population now lives in the nation's largest 100 metropolitan areas, and nearly 100 million more people are projected to live in American cities by 2050..." The rising property values in urban areas are testament to the desirability of cities and the lack of affordable housing as demand outstrips supply. WWJJD? Indeed.
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| Jane Jacobs nypl.org |
This year we celebrated the centennial of one of the great urban writers, Jane Jacobs. Her iconic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), laid out her empirical observations of cities. Ten years after her death, these observations not only are still acutely relevant but also highlight the need for a national dialogue about our cities. The book is still in print and should be required reading for would-be presidents, elected officials, urban planners, and everyone.
Jane Jacobs's views of what a city should be were inspired by the scenes she witnessed outside her West Village home in New York City. The authors describe the views outside her window as, "...humanely designed with short and walkable blocks. Successful neighborhoods are dense with a mix of housing, retail shops, schools, offices and cultural institutions. Networks of people bring 'eyes on the street,' keeping each other safe and their communities connected and driving he economies of cities." However, in Jane Jacobs's day, cities were anything but the kind of urban idyl and many have become progressively less so.
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| Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses big think.com |
Jane Jacobs is also best-known for defeating her arch nemesis, New York City's master builder Robert Moses. Robert Moses promoted an expressway that would have slashed across Lower Manhattan. Her victory over Mr. Moses inspired similar backlash over new road construction proposals that cut through American downtowns in the sixties and seventies. The authors writes, "Yet aside from these halted urban highways, there has been little sustained effort in Jacobs's mane to reclaim and revive the ordinary city street itself from cars until relatively recently." Instead of a hoped for urban renaissance, Death and Life, was accompanied by decades of rapid suburbanization, an emptying out of the cities, congestion, and economic decay from which American cities are still in recovery. At the street level, the stage for the Jane Jacobs's "sidewalk ballet" are still as congested and dangerous now as they were in her era. The effects of wonton neglect are visible from coast-to-coast. Thus, what would Jane Jacobs tell Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?
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| Bedford Avenue Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York nypost.com |
The main thing she would tell Madame Secretary and Mr. Trump, that our cities must be redesigned. A redesign is not just "...a matter of livability or quality of life, but a long-term strategy for a denser urban future, one that is environmentally rational and economically vital." Urban dwellers have a smaller carbon footprint than the average American, the result of walkable neighborhoods, readily available public transit, and not needing a car for most errands. The authors report, "A new generation of mayors, city leaders and community organizations have started to revitalize city centers and promote residential construction in downtowns where housing stock has been reduced to parking lots." This new generation of leaders are taking advantage of the fact that fewer millennials have drivers licenses. Also, technology is transforming everyday urban life with apps like Uber and Lyft that offer alternatives to owning a car and new possibilities for urban residents.
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| New York City Chinatown The Bowery New York City, New York nychinatown.org |
However Madame Secretary and Mr. Trump, fulfilling Ms. Jacobs's vision may require "...revolutionary action instead of ma merely evolutionary course." As civic officials struggle to adapt their cities for the future, they face fierce resistance from residents who perversely cite Jane Jacobs, invoking environmentalism, local economics, safety, and communal autonomy not just in opposition to out-of-scale mega-developments, but also in opposition to proposals that Jane Jacobs may have supported herself, all in the name of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). This is evident in the local residents, at official meetings, who regularly oppose dense new housing projects, new public space, bicycle lanes, or redesigned streets that would mitigate dangerous driving. By mis-appropriate Jacobian language in the name of neighborhood preservation as a cover for opposing Jacobian-like projects, essentially maintaining Robert Moses's urban vision. Madame Secretary and Mr. Trump, do you see the problem?
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| Rector Street New York City, New York ottomandetective.wordpress.com |
Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomon saw this problem up close during Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration in New York. With the help of the mayor's long-term PlaNYC strategies, designed to accommodate a million more residents by 2030, the authors created almost 400 miles of bicycles lanes, seven rapid bus lines, and initiated over 60 plaza projects, including closing Broadway to automobiles in Times Square. In addition to more affordable housing, reclaiming 180 acres of previous road space from cars, improving safety, local economies, and opened up more options for transit, but generated bitter neighborhood disputes and, yes, lawsuits over what and who city streets should be for.'
Similar efforts to alter street grids typically make headlines in cities across the United States. To wit, in San Francisco, a city with a severe housing shortage, an environmental lawsuit stopped the construction of bicycle lanes for five years, "...claiming that they would slow car traffic and increase air pollution." Referring to the building of the additional lanes. A church in Washington D.C. made the improbable claim "..that the traffic and parking impact of proposed bike lanes would infringe on the congregation's religious liberties." In fit of NIMBY-induced tantrum throwing, local residents deride attempts to redesign streets because "...they claims upset neighborhoods' historical character, make streets less or prevent people from reaching their stores or homes" whether they are accurate or not.
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| Atlantic Yards B2 Tower Brooklyn, New York therealdeal.com |
The impact of NIMBYism does not stop with the random defeated apartment project or bicycle lane. When you have vehement opposition to dense accessible communities pushes residential developments out into the growing suburbs and shrink green spaces around the cities. Madame Secretary and Mr. Trump, allow yours truly to ask you this question, would want this for yourselves, your children, or your grandchildren? By leaving the streets exactly the way they are, condemns our country to a future of sprawl, longer and more congested communities, and growing infrastructure costs "...that combine for a $1 trillion drake on the national economy." is that a way to "Make America Great?"
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| Mars Bar before and after New York City, New York huffingtonpost.com |
If you want an urban revolution to make us "Stronger Together," you need to make American cities "...walk-able, bike-able and bus-able centers of population and economic growth this century" a priority. Both presumptive candidates must implement policy that increases affordable housing in cities and realistic, competitive alternatives to driving available to increasing city populations. Leaders and similar minded advocates must articulate these goals as of a "Change You Believe In" vision that people can agree to and not allow these changes to flounder simply because a noisy few oppose them or consider them controversial.
Ultimately and ironically what is needed to achieve Jane Jacobs's vision is a Robert Moses-like strategy: "...redesigning our streets quickly and decisively for an increasingly urban age, this time committed to accommodating population growth and offering residents more options for getting around without a car." The good news is we inherited ample road space that can be repurposed for new uses. However, Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow added this caveat, "...this process of adaptation will require a Jacobs-like approach with a focus on the person on the street, and with the process designed to implement projects and not to halt them."
Therefore, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump you can start changing our streets by asking yourselves, WWJJD?
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