RIP Jane Jacobs

"Jacobs came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and corporations." --- Robert Fulford

Jane Jacobs, an urban activist whose seminal book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," informed the "New Urbanism" movement, died today at the age of 89.

Like Lewis Mumford, another great observer of cities, Jacobs recognized that at their core, cities are dynamic systems with human beings, not buildings or streets, as their fundamental unit. Cities work when the relationship between humans and the built environment are symbiotic and mutually beneficial.  Buildings, streets and open spaces are more than just a way to organize and sell space, or move vehicles. The ultimate function of the built environment is to facilitate the vital human interactions that lead to the development of a true sense of place. The following quote from Ms. Jacobs  obituary in the New York Times exemplifies this philosophy:

In a 2001 interview for Reason magazine, she spoke about the distinctive nature each city should possess. "It should be like itself. Every city has differences, from its history, from its site, and so on. These are important," she said. "One of the most dismal things is when you go to a city and it's like 12 others you've seen. That's not interesting, and it's not really truthful."

I studied ecosystems in graduate school, and I find that many of the guiding principles underlying the New Urbanist school of thought are analogous to principles that scientists use to explain why some ecological communities are more resilient and persistent than others. Jane Jacobs clearly understood that one cannot easily design and "install" a sustainable system. Cities, like ecosystems,  progress through stages of development, with each successive stage laying the groundwork for the next. Installing a superblock on top of a railyard within a brownstone neighborhood would be like installing an old growth redwood forest on top of a clear-cut field within a wetland. It could not possibly survive for more than a few months, and even then, it would take massive amounts of imported nutrients and labor intensive maintenance to keep the whole thing from immediately collapsing (the irrigation hoses for Bruce Ratner's Brooklyn "gardens" will be slowly leaking taxpayer subsidies for years to come).

In Brooklyn, we need Jane Jacobs' guiding light now more than ever.

The idea that Brooklyn could be transformed into a "destination attraction" for tourists, or perhaps even become another Jersey City if we just applied ourselves, would make Jane Jacobs puke. The so-called "leaders" in Brooklyn are repeating the same mistakes Jane warned us about decades ago. Unfortunately, Jane Jacobs and the movement she spawned are currently out of fashion with New York City planners and the architectural mavens in Manhattan.

As fellow Park Sloper Francis Morrone noted during a recent public forum on Atlantic Yards:

"Make no mistake. The politicians and the developers are getting away with a lot of what they're getting away with because elite cultural opinion has momentarily grown bored with ideas like preservation and human scale..."

"Ultimately, though, it is not about culture, it is about civilization. It's about such things as how we manage change in our environment..."

Only the crudest short-term cost accounting could possibly justify playing so fast and loose with these treasures of comely urban form.

Incremental redevelopment, of a more modest scale, may lack luster in this age in which many architects and planners have swung back from the influence of Jane Jacobs to reembrace the values of an earlier generation that venerated Le Corbusier and his notions of towers and open spaces sweeping aside the shopworn vestiges of earlier periods of urban development. But for many, incremental redevelopment seems appropriate in Brooklyn—which has fought back from the brink to provide models for urban America, not of vast projects of wholesale transformation, but of rehabilitation and the tender loving care of the sorts of neighborhoods and places that we spent so many years trying to destroy.

The best way to remember Jane Jacobs is to keep fighting for livable cities no matter how unpopular or outmoded that quaint concept is with the powers that be.

Here's to you Jane! May you rest in peace.

Comments

[Dope]

Well, yes. It's one of the reasons I'm leaving
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo. We need as many sane voices on development as we can get. Good luck in L.A.

Contemporary planning (outside of NYC and some of the more NIMBY-ish suburbs, that is)

I migrated here from Knoxville, Tennessee expecting that New York would be far more progressive in its approach to development. Imagine my shock and disappointment to see just how regressive it was. For all of its charms, New York is far more insular and "backward" than I could have possibly imagined before living here. I LOVE New York City and especially Brooklyn, but we've got a lot of work to do if we want to preserve the best elements of this city and build a better future.

There are some good principles in New Urbanism, but its proponents will have to take into account things like social psychology, spatial analysis, and traffic-flow patterns (where and how do people walk when they're out in the neighborhood? do people actually gravitate to and use town squares, or do they just look nice?)

I agree completely, but I think part of the issue is that New Urbanism is often characterized as an aesthetic "school" containing a limited vocabulary of elements. That's a very reductionist view and it's typically employed by critics to dismiss the movement as simplistic or formulaic. I view New Urbanism much more as a philosophy or set of guiding principles that can be adapted to virtually any development context.

Then again, pinning down "New Urbanism" is probably about as easy as defining "Hip Hop" or "Post Modernism." I'm sure there are plenty of people who appropriate that label that are not what I would consider New Urbanists. But given that there is no certification or advisory board, I think we'll just have to agree that there are both good and bad associations with the term. At any rate, there is probably no single unifying principle of intelligent development, and I am firmly committed to opposing dogma of any type (see this excerpt from "Still Life with Woodpecker" for the best speech on the dangers of converting good ideas to dogma).

[Stockholm Cindy]

That is certainly a blind spot Cindy, but calling the decision makers and power brokers in New York City "planners" is a gross misapplication of the term.

Well, yes. It's one of the reasons I'm leaving (I'm off to study planning in LA, where they're finally starting to take these issues seriously). New York has always been about egos and money and the influence of corrupt politicians and the mafia. Ratnerville was the final push that sent me over the edge, since I live so close to it myself and I know that Fort Greene and the South Slope are well-established, thriving communities with a sense of identity and economic vitality. It's not greenfields, it's not brownfields, it's not a slum or a blight. It's been on a steady incline for the past few decades and it's absolutely fine the way it is. I really don't think this project would fly in any other city, but in NYC it's grudgingly accepted as a matter of course. We're setting bad precedents, and we shouldn't be.

We've got to get over the idea that anyone designs or builds a living city.

I agree -- it takes a lot more than aesthetics and ivory-tower philosophy to make a great city. Contemporary planning (outside of NYC and some of the more NIMBY-ish suburbs, that is) wants to take a "growth management" approach, which is like gently trimming a built environment's knotty, unruly hair and suggesting more easily maintainable hairstyles rather than shaving its head entirely. There are some good principles in New Urbanism, but its proponents will have to take into account things like social psychology, spatial analysis, and traffic-flow patterns (where and how do people walk when they're out in the neighborhood? do people actually gravitate to and use town squares, or do they just look nice?). But like I said, this is what many planners are looking at now.

[Dope]

One of Jacobs' biggest flaws was her across-the-board dismissal of "planners" and "governments" -- as if they're all the same everywhere and all adhere to the same principles.

That is certainly a blind spot Cindy, but calling the decision makers and power brokers in New York City "planners" is a gross misapplication of the term.

There is no planning, only a Darwinian lottery for limited space and public handouts - certainly not the evolved city planning that you are advocating.

I'm all for the organic growth of ecosystems, but if there's no one keeping watch over it, the bad guys will feel that they have even more carte blanche to bulldoze everything.

I don't think there should ever be a "one" keeping watch over the way a city adapts and grows. The ground rules should be agreed upon by the community, informed by experts, managed by public servants and adapted as the changing environment requires. We've got to get over the idea that anyone designs or builds a living city. It has never happened IMNSHO, but I am admittedly biased by my scientific background and selective observation of the world.

[Dope]

Mumford loathed Jacobs as a philistine. He yearned for a return to the twelth century that produced the first gothic cathedrals. Though he was a class scholar,
I wonder where he would have stood on Ratnerville.

Mumford was certainly an odd bird, which makes him all the more lovable. I seem to recall one of his primary theses was that cities arise because people want to be near their dead. I would have thought that proximity to transit routes, easily defended positions and natural resources would be more predictive. But what the hell do I know? I'm a philistine.

As for Ratnerville, his opinion would depend on whether his fetish for gothic cathedrals was based on some aesthetic element or the fact that they were grand artistic statements by brilliant architects.

If the latter, he might be drink the Gehry kool-aid and try to convince us that Miss Brooklyn was emblematic of the spiritual aspirations of Brooklynites.

[Stockholm Cindy]

One of Jacobs' biggest flaws was her across-the-board dismissal of "planners" and "governments" -- as if they're all the same everywhere and all adhere to the same principles. I know that her experience as a civic activist has been tainted by terrible urban renewal policies from the '40s through the '70s, and that a lot of the really high-profile re/development plans now are unfortunate exercises in greed. That's not the case everywhere, though. There are a lot of struggling older cities -- such as Milwaukee -- that really want to bring new blood into the core areas and see responsible, people-conscious development as the way forward.

The difference now is that most planners are on the side of the people, and are pro-density and smart growth. The zoning she hated so much is indeed based on antiquated ideas and needs to be re-examined, but without it we wouldn't have historic districts and all attempts at preservation would be futile. I'm all for the organic growth of ecosystems, but if there's no one keeping watch over it, the bad guys will feel that they have even more carte blanche to bulldoze everything.

[Paul]

Mumford loathed Jacobs as a philistine. He yearned for a return to the twelth century that produced the first gothic cathedrals. Though he was a class scholar,
I wonder where he would have stood on Ratnerville.