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1 Jacobs as activist. 2 Jacobs, c. 1968. 3 Jacobs, 1986. Maggie Steber, Planning Magazine, September 1986.

Jane Jacobs

Providence Field Trip

Based on what we saw in Providence, and citing sites and readings, assess:

• the good and bad practices of the past as they stand,
• contemporary preservation initiatives,
• future challenges.

...with reference to Jane Jacob's principles of how a city works, described below and in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Your essay should be no more than four pages, double spaced.

Not on Providence Field Trip

Using Jacob's habits, select (and define) a specific urban place in a great city (Boston, Providence, etc.) and carefully observe (look closely) at least one 'quantity' that contributes to the organized complexity of the place and its people. Use correct scientific method to understand the principle of cities, the interdependent conditions that sustain urban vitality, and the forces that may affect urban vitality (in a positive or negative manner). Undertake the following:

Prepare a four (maximum, double spaced) page paper addressing Jacob's methods, habits, conditions, forces, and site-specific observations of your selected place;

Critically consider contemporary preservation initiatives that have been developed to 'preserve' urban vitality, with specific reference to your place, its people, and your selected quantities. Note how these initiatives are related to community activities and the work of other professions.

Preamble

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities(1961) Jane Jacobs invites us to look closely — using correct scientific method and not considering a city as a work of art — to understand the principle of cities, the interdependent conditions that sustain urban vitality, and the forces that may affect growth.

Almost three decades have passed since Jacobs wrote her seminal book. During this time, economic and social ills have spurred the migration of affluent city-dwellers (and their investments) to the suburbs, only to have their new home become, in Kunstler's terms, a 'Geography of Nowhere' through sprawl. 'Sprawl' involves uncontrolled, unsustainable development of rural lands coupled with concurrent disinvestment in existing infrastructure — suburban, and urban.

Meanwhile, many people have realized the vital need for careful land use planning, including the protection of 'greenfields,' reduced sprawl, and reinvestment in inner suburbs and cities.

During the 70s and 80s the health, political clout, and population of most cities declined dramatically.

Yet, in 1989, Roberta Brandes Gratz, could write The Living City (New York: Simon &;Schuster), a book of urban success stories whose subtitle addressed 'how urban residents are revitalizing America's neighborhoods and downtown shopping districts by thinking small in a big way." Other communities, other authors, and other success stories followed.

Today cities are rebounding. Michael Rezendes (Boston Globe, January 26, 1997, p.A21) notes, "That life in American cities is looking up was confirmed in a recent survey of more than 400 local officials taken by the National League of Cities. The survey showed that, for the first time since 1990 that . . . most of 30 benchmark conditions are improving."

In the long run, cities will be a solution -- not a problem -- to land use and growth.

Jacobs (Excerpts)

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) Jane Jacobs invites us to look closely — using correct scientific method and not considering a city as a work of art — to understand the principle of cities, the interdependent conditions that sustain urban vitality, and the forces that may affect growth.

Look closely

"So in this book we shall start over, if only in a small way, adventuring in the real world, ourselves. The way to get at what goes on in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is, I think, to 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 and threads of principle emerge among them." (page 13)

The scientific tactics used to understand and help the kind of problems cities pose

" Thinking has its strategies and tactics too, much as other forms of action have. . . . One of the main things to know is what kind of problem cities pose, for all problems cannot be thought of in the same way. "

Jacobs suggest that we consider new strategies, new scientific methods, for thinking that can be applied to cities. She notes that Dr. Warren Weaver summarized and interpreted the history of scientific thought in an essay on science and complexity (1958 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation).

Jacobs notes, "Dr. Weaver lists three stages of development in the history of scientific thought: (1) the ability to deal with problems of simplicity [that contain two factors which are directly related to each other] (2) the ability to deal with problems of disorganized complexity [that may involve millions of variables, but that can be understood using techniques of probability theory and statistical mechanics]; and (3) ability to deal with problems of organized complexity [that may involve many variables, which must be understood as interdependent]." (pages 428-433) [See Mitchell, Ted. In Defence of Generalists, Raise the Hammer, Dec 14, 2004.]

"Cities happen to be problems of organized complexity, like the life sciences. They present 'situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantitiesare all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways.' [Weaver quoted.]" (page 433)

"The theorists of conventional modern city planning have consistently mistaken cities as problems of simplicity and of disorganized complexity, and have to analyze and treat them thus."

"Garden City planning theory [beginning with Ebeneezer Howard in the late nineteenth century] attacked the problem of town planning much as . . . a two variable problem of simplicity. The two major variables . . . were the quantity of housing (or population) and the number of jobs." (page 435)

In the late 1920s and 30s city planning theory, embraced by the Radiant City vision of Le Corbusier, began to employ probability theory, ". . . as if cities were problems of disorganized complexity, understandable purely by statistical analysis, predictable by the application of probability mathematics, manageable by conversion into groups of averages." (page 436)

More recently, cities have been considered as problems in organized complexity. But while the life sciences and cities pose the same kinds of problems, they are not the same problems. "However, the tactics of understanding both are similar in the sense that both depend on the microscopic or detailed view, so to speak, rather than on the less detailed, naked-eye view suitable for viewing problems of simplicity or the remote telescopic view suitable for viewing problems of disorganized complexity."

"In the life sciences, organized complexity is handled by identifying a specific factor or quantity -- say an enzyme -- and then painstakingly learning its intricate relationships and interconnectedness with other factors or quantities. All this is observed in terms of the behavior (not mere presence) of other specific (not generalized) factors or quantities. To be sure, the techniques of two variable and disorganized-complexity analysis are used too, but only as subsidiary tactics."

"In the case of understanding cities, I think the most important habits of thought are these:

1. To think about processes [and their catalysts];
2. To work inductively, reasoning from particulars to the general, rather than the reverse [rather than deductive reasoning of planners];
3. To seek for 'unaverage' clues involving very small quantities, which reveal the way larger and more 'average' quantities are operating." [The 'unaverage' can be physical, economic, cultural, or social.]

"The processes that occur in cities are not arcane, capable of only being understood by experts. They can be understood by almost anybody. Many ordinary people already understand them; they simply have not given these processes names, or considered that by understanding these ordinary arrangements of cause and effect, we can also direct them if we want to." (page 438-441)

[See Mehaffy, Michael. The Kind of Problem Architecture Is: Returning to Jane Jacobs' final chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Katarxis, No.3.

Esthetic limitations on what can be done with cities

". . . A city cannot be a work of art.

". . . Although art and life are interwoven, they are not the same things. Confusion between them is, in part, why efforts at city design are so disappointing. It is important, in arriving at better design strategies and tactics, to clear up this confusion.

"To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life."

"The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art." (page 372-373)

The principle (diversity) of cities

"One principle emerges so ubiquitously, and in so many and such complex different forms . . . This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they must supplement each other in certain concrete ways. (Page 14)

The conditions that sustain vitality

"However, the conditions that generate city diversity are quite easy to discover by observing places in which diversity flourishes and studying the economic reasons why it can flourish in these places. Although the results are intricate, and the ingredients producing them may vary enormously, this complexity is based on tangible economic relationships which, in principle, are much simpler than the intricate urban mixtures they make possible.

To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable.

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good portion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence."

"All four in combination are necessary to generate city diversity; the absence of any one of the four frustrates a district's potential." (pages 150-151)

The forces that affect growth

". . . several powerful forces. . . can influence, for good or for ill, the growth of diversity and vitality in cities, once an area is not crippled by lack of one or more of the four conditions necessary for generating diversity."

"These forces, in the form that they work for ill, are: the tendency for outstandingly successful diversity in cities to destroy itself; the tendency for massive single elements in cities (many of which are necessary and otherwise desirable) to cast a deadening influence; the tendency for population instability to counter the growth of diversity; and the tendency for both public and private money either to glut or to starve development and change." (page 242)