Jane Jacobs: Right Questions, Wrong Neighborhoods

Hi!

Actually there is a much more extensive discussion on this topic (with relatively recent posts by both Frank Gruber and myself, Benjamin Hemric) on the TradArch internet mailing list -- which can be viewed (even by non-subscribers to the list) by visiting the TradArch webpage and browsing through the archives for June 2006. The discussion is actually part of a larger thread entitled, "Gehry under Seige in Brooklyn." (This thread, a discussion of the Bruce Ratner / Frank Gehry plan for the Atlantic train yards of the L.I.R.R. and the effects it would have on Brooklyn, actually began in May 2006.) To find the webpage and the various posts in the thread, just type in "TradArch" in a search engine like Yahoo, click on the "TradArch listserv" entry, click on the month (June 2006) and then click on "date" (so that the various posts will be listed in chronological order).

I think it's an interesting topic, and I hope those interested will tune in to the TradArch webpage (and thereby make double postings to TradArch and Planetizen unnecessary). (I also hope to have the time to post again in the TradArch thread, sometime in the next few days.)

Back to the substance of your post: While it is true that most Americans live outside traditional urban neighborhoods, my comments were directed toward the idea, which seems erroneous to me, that Jane Jacobs had somehow "overlooked" or "forgotten" about suburban, semi-surburban or quasi-urban neighborhoods. It seems to me that, contrary to the comments of the original Planetizen poster and the Frank Gruber column he referenced, Jane Jacobs did not "overlook" or "forget" such neighborhoods but, rather, wrote about how to approach fixing such neighborhoods when they went "bad." And in her last book, "Dark Age Ahead," she writes about the successful "densification" of such neighborhoods in the future.

His point being that what is characteristically "urban" in most American cities are not the type of neighborhoods Jacobs describes in the book.

Most American urbanism (that is within the limits of prewar cities) is defined by strees lined with single family homes, duplexes, two-flats, triple-deckers, small rowhouses, and some apartment buildings scattered in between.

Places like Grenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Boston's North End, Rittenhouse Square, various inner parts of Chicago, ect., do not define the norm for American cities. I think that is what Gruber's point really is--that Jacobs wrote a book about urbaism that doesn't apply to where most people live.

The May 1, 20006 Frank Gruber column in the "Santa Monica Lookout" that was quoted in the original post appears to me to be making some additional points. Here are my comments:

Despite the fact that Mr. Gruber made a number of unusually insightful comments in his column, "Jane Jacobs is Dead; Long Live Jane Jacobs," it seems to me that, in the end, he missed the point of what Jacobs was actually saying in "Death and Life of Great American Cities" and, later, in her subsequent six books -- and therefore unintentionally muddied rather than clarified the discussion of her legacy and impact.

Jacobs' first (and most famous) book, "Death and Life," is a study of why certain areas of "great" cities are amenable to spontaneous revitalization while other sections are mired down in stagnation or decay. As Mr. Gruber acknowledges, this book is about
what works, and doesn't work, in large cities -- and it is not about suburbs, small towns, etc.

In Jacobs' opinion, there are four crucial variables that -- whether one likes it or not -- empirically account for the success or failure of districts within large cities, and sufficiently high densities is one of those four crucial variables. So from Jacobs' point of view, it would be foolish to try and replicate neighborhoods with "in-between" densities in
large cities -- that's not the solution, it's the problem!

And Jacobs does in fact discuss unsuccessful low-density areas outside a city's core -- the "grey areas," as she calls them -- and points out that, oftentimes, one of their problems is indeed that their densities are too low. (She points out, for instance, that in Brooklyn the most successful area is a high-density one and that the least successful areas are low-density.)

Jacobs argues that high-density urban areas have had an undeserved bad image with the American public, and low-density areas and suburbs have had an undeserved
good image, essentially because the public has been brainwashed over the years by orthodox urban planners (and their disciples, and the Sunday supplements,
etc.) and because many high-density neighborhoods have, in fact, been badly done high-density neighborhoods (i.e., don't have the right mix of all four variables). In later years, she also pointed out that there indeed seems to be quite an unmet demand for successful high density urban neighborhoods -- that the real problem with "gentrification" is that
there is apparently much more demand for such neighborhoods than there is supply.

Although in her subsequent works she shifts her focus to economics and mostly discusses cities and suburbs indirectly, I think it is fair to say that Jacobs seems to feel that, if things go right, post-WWII suburbs will become the fertile ground for tomorrow's cities (just as the little suburban village north of colonial New York was fertile ground for 20th century
Greenwich Village).

As Jacobs says in "Dark Age Ahead" (pg. 147), "Sprawl can become less wasteful only by being used still more intensively. If that happens, suburban sprawl will turn out to have been an interim stage, a transition between land in agricultural use and land densely
enough occupied to support mass transit, to form functional and inclusive communities, to reduce car dependency, and to alleviate shortage of affordable housing."

So I think Jacobs does, in fact, address the issues raised by Mr. Gruber -- although whether she does this successfully or not is something to be decided, of course, by each individual who reads her works.