Tag Archives: Planetizen

The Destruction and Survival of a City Neighborhood

on October 21, 2011 in Video

A libertarian take on urban renewal. Filmmaker Jim Epstein read The Power Broker—the biography of Jacobs’ nemesis Robert Moses—and set out to document one of the communities destroyed by Moses’ urban renewal of the 1950s.

From Planetizen:

Epstein found a number of folks who lived in a black community up on West 99th Street that was cleared by Moses’ Manhattantown project:

“In 2007, Epstein started digging through the archives and interviewing to learn more about the that had vanished. From this work, he created a 7-minute documentary portrait of the old community…”

Cross-posted on Yurbanism.

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Roberta Brandes Gratz: Enough With the ‘Enough with Jane Jacobs’ Already!

on March 7, 2011 in Jane Jacobs

The award-winning journalist, critic, lecturer and author has recently wrote an important article for Planetizen.  In it, she defends Jane Jacobs against a recent wave of attacks and mischaracterizations from prominent authors and commentators, most notably, Edward L. Glaeser and his recently publish book, Triumph of the City.

Roberta writes:

Jane Jacobs

Original photo by Sam Beebe / Ecotrust

No one can predict what Jane would say about anything. She was too much of an original to be predictable. But one might assume that she would at least be puzzled – even perhaps amused – by some of the confusion and misinterpretation of her thinking and writing these days, even attributing ideas to her that can not be found in any of her writing or activism. Fortunately, her ideas remain much too popular to be diminished by any of the attempts to undercut her thinking. It is useful to the larger civic debate, however, to challenge some of the misguided assertions about what Jane advocated, thought or caused to happen.

Part of the problem is that Jane Jacobs wrote so much on a such a vast array of topics on that her words are easily misconstrued to defend any position, especially from who have only read a bit of her work and cite it out of context.

Be sure to read the whole article: Enough With the ‘Enough with Jane Jacobs’ Already!

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Stop Rethinking Jane Jacobs

on January 24, 2011 in Jane Jacobs

One of my favorite contemporary urbanist writers, Roberta Brandes Gratz has written an excellent article for Planetizen on the current trend to ‘re-evaluate’ Jane Jacobs.  While I strongly urge you to check out the full article, here is a short excerpt:

Original photo by Sam Beebe / Ecotrust

No one can predict what Jane would say about anything. She was too much of an original to be predictable. But one might assume that she would at least be puzzled—even perhaps amused—by some of the confusion and misinterpretation of her thinking and writing these days, even attributing ideas to her that can not be found in any of her writing or activism. Fortunately, her ideas remain much too popular to be diminished by any of the attempts to undercut her thinking. It is useful to the larger civic debate, however, to challenge some of the misguided assertions about what Jane advocated, thought or caused to happen.

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No Need for Acolytes

on August 24, 2010 in Jane Jacobs

Downtown Express photo by Lorenzo Ciniglio

I came across this National League of Cities column through Planetizen.com. It’s great advice for  Jane Jacobs fans and detractors alike.

Emerging Issues: Wrestling With Jane Jacobs

by Bill Barnes

Jane Jacobs wrote one of the most influential urban affairs books of the 20th century.

“Death and Life of Great American Cities” — published in 1961 and still in print today — has become a talisman, cited by many and sundry to advance their views and proposals. Jacobs, who died in 2006, is an icon of the field, and new books explore her ideas and narrate her activities.

Jacobs’ views have become “the common wisdom of our time,” says Paul Goldberger, a prominent architecture critic.

have changed dramatically since 1961. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Death and Life,” it’s surely time now to celebrate her accomplishments and also to think freshly about her ideas, about what we assume is actually going on in cities, and about what we believe is correct and desirable about cities.

Jacobs’ views have become, often unacknowledged, part of the regular vocabulary of planning and urban development. Take, for example, the idea that a street with storefronts and residences and lots of pedestrians is safer than a deserted one because there are around to watch over it. Or, the idea that mixing uses in dense, complex places is preferable to isolating dwellings from shops and parks from workplaces. Or, the notion that development should evolve from existing uses, rather than by governmentally planned, wholesale clearance and new construction. All of those and more can be found in “Death and Life.”

The very first paragraph of “Death and Life” promises “an attack on the principles and aims that have shaped modern orthodox city planning and rebuilding.” At mid-century, that orthodoxy included urban renewal and highway construction, and it was carried out through such elements as big projects, separation of uses, and “blight” designations followed by clearance. Jacobs’ writing and her activism in ’s Greenwich Village contributed immensely to the unraveling — but not the disappearance — of that approach. The book bristles with pointed criticisms and sharp analyses that aim to burst the modernist orthodoxy.

It’s a wonderful book, strongly written, and well-worth reading today.

More people should read the book before they cite Jacobs as an ally for their projects. One recent writer confessed to relying on second- and third-hand sources and to referencing “Death and Life” in support of “whatever I was working on.” Upon actually reading the book, she concluded that the “New Urbanism” movement’s implied claim to Jacobs’ approval is unwarranted. Goldberger complained that Jacobs’ ideas are being used to support purposes “deeply inconsistent with her values.”

Since 1961, cities have changed and the conventional wisdom has changed. How, then, to think anew about ideas that are so widely and implicitly shared?

In “Death and Life,” Jacobs herself provided useful recommendations.

First, she warned her readers against unexamined, preconceived notions, including her own vigorously argued ideas. She encouraged readers to “constantly and skeptically test what I say against [their] own knowledge.”

Second, she urged people who are interested in city life to think inductively and “look closely, and with as little previous expectation as is possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to see what they mean and whether threads of principle emerge among them.” The page after the table of contents in “Death and Life” announces this approach to the reader. It is labeled “Illustrations.” (The book has no illustrations. It also has no charts or graphs or tables of statistics.) The page declares: “For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.”

Third, Jacobs cautioned against over-generalization. She said that we should know which thing we’re talking about. That is, she knew that “Death and Life” is “concentrated on great [that is, very big] cities, and on their inner areas.” Thus, she also knew what she wasn’t talking about: “I hope no reader will try to transfer my observations into guides as to what goes on in towns, or little cities, or in suburbs which are still suburban. Towns, suburbs and even little cities are totally different organisms from great cities.”

We now need studies that follow Jacobs’ advice: closely observed, fearless studies of the way things do or don’t function on the ground in big cities and also in towns, suburbs and little cities, and regions. We don’t need acolytes of Jane Jacobs; we need people who will think as hard and as well as she did about “the kind of problem a city is.”

Bill Barnes (barnes@nlc.org) is the director for emerging issues at NLC.

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Quick Take: Living in Mrs. Jacobs' Neighborhood

on February 10, 2010 in Jane Jacobs, Quick Take

I came across this post on Planetizen.com.  one of my favorite resources for all things .

Living in Mrs. Jacobs’ Neighborhood

Wed, 02/10/2010 – 11:54

A decade or so ago, after reading some of Jane Jacobs’ work, I became aware of the distinction between mixed-use and single-use .  In those days, I imagined that in a well-functioning urban neighborhood, every non-polluting use would be mixed together, and the lion of housing would lay down with the lamb of commerce.

Jane's Toronto House

But for the past few months, I have lived just six blocks from Jacobs’ Toronto house, in the Annex neighborhood.  And in the Annex, I have learned that the distinction between sprawl and walkable urbanism is a little more subtle than the bumper-sticker phrase “mixed-use” suggests.In the Annex, as in conventional sprawl development (CSD), most businesses  are on a few major , especially Bloor Street West between Spadina and Bathurst. Although Bloor has a few residences above shops, Bloor is primarily a commercial street.

So how is Bloor different from San Jose Boulevard (the sprawling commercial street of my former neighborhood in Jacksonville)?  Bloor’s distinction rests less on of uses than on street design.

San Jose has a wide variety of commercial activities near some residential blocks, but is as wide as eight lanes in some spots- too wide to be comfortable for pedestrians.  Bloor is only four lanes wide, and is thus relatively easy for pedestrians to cross.  And on Bloor, nearly every commercial building immediately adjoins the sidewalk, rather than being set back from the sidewalk by yards of parking.

As a result, pedestrians can easily access shops, rather than dodging on the way to their destination.   And because the nearby residential blocks are part of a grid system, neighborhood residents don’t have to hop from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac to reach Bloor’s businesses.  In sum, Bloor is pedestrian-friendly less because of mixed use than because of pedestrian-friendly street design and compact development.

The Annex’s residential streets, like those in my old neighborhood in Jacksonville, are at least somewhat single-use: streets with large apartment complexes (St. George and Spadina near Bloor) have very few single-family structures, and other residential streets are dominated by houses and duplexes.  So in a sense, the Annex’s streets are as single-use as a typical suburban subdivision- both types of streets are dominated by one type of structure.

But there are two significant differences between an Annex street and a CSD street.  First, some of the Annex houses have been cut up into small apartments; thus, on an Annex street, single-family houses and duplexes often coexist with very small apartment houses (though not with high-rises).  More importantly, the Annex’s residential streets are more compact than their equivalents in sprawl subdivisions: houses are closer together, and are often duplexes.  Thus, more people live on an Annex street than live on a typical residential street in Jacksonville, which means that the Annex has the density to support good public transit.

In sum, what makes the Annex walkable is not so much that every street mixes uses; rather, it is that the commercial streets are easily accessible from the residential ones, thus creating a mixed-use neighborhood.

NOTE: To see some examples of what I am talking about, go to Google Street View at maps.google.com.  To see Bloor, go to anyplace between 350 and 600 Bloor Street West in Toronto.  To see a typical residential street, go to Albany Avenue, just north of Bloor (Jane Jacobs lived on this stretch of Albany).    To see an apartment-oriented street, go to St. George St. or Spadina Road just north of Bloor.  To see my old sprawl street in Jacksonville, go to 10000 San Jose Boulevard in Jacksonville.

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Jane Jacobs, Gentrifier?

on January 14, 2010 in Jane Jacobs

I came across this post on Planetizen. It provides an interesting perspective and touched on an issue that I’ve long wrestled with: authenticity, preservation and organic development. From the article: “just what does authenticity mean, and who is really allowed to claim it?”

Jane Jacobs, Gentrifier?
Posted by: Tim Halbur
11 January 2010 – 9:00am

Prof. Sharon Zukin argues that Jacobs had “a gentrifier’s appreciation of urban authenticity” in her new book, Naked City.

Zukin tackles the issue of gentrification and the people who lay claim to the authenticity of neighborhoods, particularly in New York. She finds no easy answers, but does believe in the quest to preserve authenticity.

In the New York Post: “In the end, New York City development revolves around who successfully claims ownership of a neighborhood. Conflict arises when ‘groups representing the opposing visions claim the same space,’ Zukin says, especially in ‘the conflict over authentic representations of neighborhoods like Red Hook, between old working-class homeowners, public housing project tenants, and gentrifiers.’”

Full Story: Naked City

Source: New York Post, January 10, 2010

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Recent Readings: October 24-29

on October 30, 2009 in Uncategorized

From my personal site www.yuriartibise.com:

A curation of what’s caught my attention over the past week:

  • Bad Example (or why we fail to adapt good examples): Attempts to answer the question “Why do so many places seem unable to learn even from their own successes, much less others?”  Key quote: “The mark of a great city is in how it treats its ordinary spaces, not its special ones.”
  • Gary Vaynerchuk Live on Crush It Tour (Video): A link to a recording of a special Gary Vee’s presentation hosted by Doug Sutton with Keller Williams Realty East Valley. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but seeing him speak in front of two different audiences on Tuesday night made me a believer. Though his message was largely the same, he carefully tailored it to the different audience, keeping it fresh and interesting (if anything I though the second time was better suited to me personally, even with the lack of his trademark  ‘colorful language’.)  Gary is truly somebody who gets it. Not just business, or social media, or family, or , but ALL of it.  If you follow the link to my friend Jay Thompson’s site and leave a comment on Jay’s original post, you can win a copy off Gary’s bestselling book Crush It!.
  • What Jane Jacobs Can Teach Us About the Economy: Jane Jacobs is well known for her contribution to thought.  After all, she recently led Planetizen’s recent Top 100 Urban Thinkers poll.   She is less well-known for her insights into economics, although that is quickly changing.  Here ‘s an overview of some of Jane’s economic notions and how they resonate during this recession.
  • Halloween Costumes for Urban Planners: And for a bit of fun to mark the end of October, here are some Halloween costume ideas from Planetizen’s Nate Berg for the incurable urbanist.

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KunstlerCast #83: Jane Jacobs

on October 11, 2009 in Jane Jacobs

One of my favorite resources for all things urban is the KunstlerCast, a weekly audio program about the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.  It features James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency and other books.  Each week host/producer Duncan Crary speaks with Kunstler weekly about the failure of suburbia and the inevitable end of this living arrangement ‘with no future’.

This weeks episode features a discussion of Jane Jacobs:

, an urban website and book publisher, recently conducted a poll about the Top 100 Urban Thinkers. Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, made #1 on the list. Kunstler explains the story and importance of Jacobs. He also recollects interviewing her in 2000. Although at the time Jacobs was writing a book about the coming energy crisis, Dark Age Ahead, Kunstler said she didn’t seem interested in talking about “Long Emergency” issues during their conversation. A listener caller tells us why he thinks Sesame Street is a good model for .

You can download the podcast here.

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Quick Take: Streets Are For People, Not (Just) Cars

on April 20, 2009 in Quick Take

http://www.planetizen.com/node/38401

Key Quote: 

The domination of the street by in the last century is at least partially a result of an innocent tendency of pedestrians to traffic the sidewalk for various reasons, rather than a categorical forfeit of the majority of the public realm to one user-type.  In the current, thrilling campaign by to return urbanity to something more human scale, a photo memorializing the multiplicitous modal functionality of Scollay Square before its razing is as good a symbol as any for wisdom that must be embraced once again.

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