Jane Jacobs clearly states that her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is an attack of current city planning [circa 1961] and city rebuilding. Jacobs' arguments are focused from the standpoint that "she likes dense cities...cares for them most" and what she believes most detrimental to the city are the principles that have shaped modern orthodox urban planning. Some of her opinions are focused on ideas that were built off the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago which turned the ideal of a "City Beautiful to City Monumental", in the cropping up of civic and cultural centers in cities across the nation. But, "when the fair came to the city, somehow it did not function like the fair". At the nucleus of the book, clarifying what constitutes a city neighborhood is questioned. Jacobs laments the idea that "if only we had more money, we could fix things" and shifting the aim towards better planning as a way of halting the waste of money. To look at planning by not needing to elevate [and possibly invent] the greatness of a city, but first by not tearing them down by means of dissecting and demoralizing their populous and it's environs is crucial to Jacobs' theory. If price tags are put on different sectors of the population, who decides who deserves what in the city and why? Jacobs states that "cities are an immense place for trial and error", something which I previously touched on from ideas within Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City as he comments that the "goals of the city are ever changing, always in sight, but the finish line in nonexistent".
Jacobs' argument that as the city has been "unstudied and unrespected...[they] have served as sacrificial victims" intersects with her criticism on the faulty pre-planning of cities that begins with looking at her interpretation of Robert Moses' attempt to completely understand how traffic functions could operate in a neighborhood, without being able to actually understand this until you analyze the true role of the city and what its people need first. She compares city planning and the rebuilding of cities to the pseudosciences which resided in 19th century medicine, full of complicated rules, criticism if questioned and dogma.
As she continues to describe the need for functional mixtures within communities in the chapter "The Need for Aged Buildings", Jacobs describes that not only the beautiful and grand architectural marvels, but generally older, ordinary, low value and even run down buildings supplement a large function for the foundation of cities. Only time can affect the economic outcome for aged buildings, but a bargain can be found out of the previous generation's high cost for such a space. Those peoples and enterprises that can afford the rent of an older building can start work and if needed within the community will [hopefully] flourish. Jacobs believes that "old ideas can use new buildings, but new ideas must use old buildings". The only commercial endeavours which can provide for new construction are those with established old ideas, are high in value and can commit to the high overhead. If what is old eventually ages and the new becomes the old and so forth, a constantly changing mixture is available for neighborhoods which can use mixed-use environments. This approach could align with her ideas of "primary diversity mixtures" where the minglings of building ages are necessary as well as living costs and tastes to get populations of living quarters as well as enterprises grouped. Small businesses could lead the light for others to follow suit if a model is shown that these neighborhoods encourage growth.
[A mixture of buildings for living and enterprise in Oregon, USA]Jacobs argues that the successful side of the street is the one with mixed aged buildings as it creates more room for diversity. How one equates older buildings with an assigned 'charm' and others with 'broken' status could examine why turn-of-the-century spaces are snatched up and newly developed condos lay vacant in some cities and vice-versa. As the economic value of aged buildings can only progress over time, although be sustained for many years; Jacobs further pushes for these uses because "once a neighborhood becomes a place of dullness, it becomes a place to leave". Jacobs states that "when people comment on how much the neighborhood has changed", it refers "mostly to their feelings and less about the physical structures".
Her belief is that cities need to implement a "close-grained diversity" which utilizes balance and support to many different systems and peoples. As she describes a housing project within New York City's East Harlem neighborhood, constant tenant complaints were voiced about a beautification project installed in the form of a grass lawn; when all the people really wanted within their sites was a place to sit down, congregate, get a cup of coffee and read the news. What may be more beautiful to the planner can have no real interaction or purpose to its intended user and/or inhabitant.
[Public housing, Chicago, Illinois]This link to the Encyclopedia of Chicago provides fascinating documents on the building of public housing options like Cabrini Green.
Below is an example of mixed use property, although a new development, illustrates some of Jacobs' ideas.
In reaction to the Garden City [a response of 19th century London as evil and in direct war with nature, to move people away from cities and repopulate the country] from planners like Ebenezer Howard to Le Corbusier's "Radial City" [a combination of the Garden City and building upwards, by keeping people off the street and inline with Garden City ideas to keep them in the park], Jacobs is able to compile arguments against the rise of the "Decentrists", whose "primary use of regional planning was to decentralize cities, thin and disperse the population and enterprise to smaller roles over more space". These physical utopias tended to shift towards social utopias, as these city plans were conceived as problem solvers to the metropolis, by abandoning them all-together. As Jacobs figures the ideas within these movements are bridging on the authoritative, especially when looking at the role of the street as "bad", her argument shifts to looking at street for a starting point to investigate the need for the city to work for the pedestrian to help showcase an urban place as multifaceted and full of cultural life .
In parental views of city planning, Robert Fishman writes that the master builder Robert Moses was bound to appropriate only what he wanted. Even though Jacobs and Moses couldn't be more polar, Jacobs still recognized for all his faults he was still someone who "got things done". To sustain Moses, it required an audience to believe that Moses was needed to save and sustain 20th century cities. His radical ideas on running a highway through Washington Square Park in New York City were to fall under Lewis Mumford's criticism of "civic vandalism", although Moses pushed onwards believing that these ideas could be completely inline post-National Housing Act of 1949 which heavily concentrated on slum clearance and riding with Le Corbusier's view that "the city that achieves speed achieves success".
[1811 approved Commissioner grid of New York City]Although the Washington Square Park debate was won and no highway was to bisect its space, the events ignited the conversation for the national debate of urbanism in America. This same language is important today in 2011, especially with the push for the green movement over the past decade. The fight for the reuse of buildings and spaces to the petition of stopping the demolishments of entire neighborhoods can be viewed throughout the entire country. Two separate blogs in particular look at grassroots preservation efforts in cities like St. Louis and Buffalo. The recontextualization efforts to bring new ideas to existing things, echoes Jacobs' fight for restoration over clearance. A neighborhood and city can always have its values built upon, in that I would state that Jacobs' argument is similar to Moses' which is that "cities must be rebuilt, not abandoned", but instead her focus is not to "rebuild" but to "repurpose and reuse". As slum clearance, foreclosure and abandonment is occurring at rapid pace nationally, it has never been more poignant to look at cities for the needs of people.
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