Althouse: "She bulldozes out of existence every desirable innovation in urban planning during the last century..."

April 25, 2006

"She bulldozes out of existence every desirable innovation in urban planning during the last century..."

Ah, to write a truly great, truly influential book!

Goodbye to Jane Jacobs.

"The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

6 comments:

SippicanCottage said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/25/06, 9:39 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I love "From Bauhaus to Our House."; 4/26/06, 6:45 AM
sierra said...: Perhaps the problem isn't that she was forceful or different, but that she didn't have any clue how to get her message to the public. If that were the case, lower Manhatttan would today be bisected by a large highway.

I often have occasion to think of her when walking to work through two sets of public housing projects: one a high-rise and one low. Whenever I heard about a stabbing or some other violent crime, it always took place in the high-rise.; 4/26/06, 8:39 AM
jeff said...: The problem with her theory is that generally people don't like to be all jumbled up together...

Urban Renewal seems to consist of "gentrification" now - so instead of bulldozing slums, the rich move the poor out and rebuild them.

And then call the cops if the poor take one step back into the neighborhood.; 4/26/06, 10:57 AM
tjl said...: Jacobs' own politics may have been on the leftish side, but she deserves credit for having struck a huge blow against one of the most egregious forms of big-government overreaching -- the Urban Renewal Project in which the city or state comes in, levels an entire neighborhood, and builds vast lifeless examples of government design. Jacobs believed that the residents of the neighborhood, if left to themselves, would create urban vitality through their own choices and actions. What could be more libertarian than that?; 4/26/06, 12:00 PM
Hey said...: Her work is completely separate from her own politics and actions.

She had a number of excellent insights that were so true they seem to be common knowledge. Foremost amongst these is that "eyes on the street" improve the security of a neighbourhood. Oh my God yes, as evidenced by the horrow that is high rise projects or tower in the park architecture (with the utmost despair coming from high rise tower in the park projects).

As to zoning... the only good zoning is no zoning. The most interesting things have happened in areas where zoning was non-operable in the hearts of excessively zoned cities. NYC is the best evidence of this: so much rehabilitation was done completely illegally, but because the neighbourhoods were abandoned no one did much about it, until they ended up grandfathering people. Now that areas are liveable again, of course, zoning has descended with a vengeance and projects are hampered, stalled, and encumbered. Oy!

Mies did some absolutely wonderful work in terms of office buildings, with the best example being Toronto's TD Centre. The brutal winters and joyful summers in Canada help alleviate much of the problems of tower in the park, as does the recent, very unorthodox, restaurant patios that pop up once Toronto becomes liveable again in the spring. There are vast expanses of the project that just don't work as public space but thankfully haven't been conquered by the homeless. But in general, yes he was a horrendous architect that did very bad things.

The worst part is that there is a movement to preserve modernist architecture. I know I sound like a modernist discussing Victorianism, but there is so much vile, vile sh.. modernist and internationalist architecture that people are trying to protect. I'm cringing for the fights about brutalist architecture, which I'm sure will come. Some architecture is just so bad, all of it needs to be excised. I hope that my fight is against the effects of this architecture, rather than simple fashion. I think that my love for some modernist work is evidence that I only hate bad work, but one can never be sure.

The best stories about her actions contradicting her theories: she recently fought tall buildings on the major street several blocks from her house (note that there already numerous tall buildings in the neighbourhood, in bad 60s architecture 2-3 blocks from the major road) that were across the street from a subway station, as well as fighting against an expansion of a public school 1 block from her house. The private school's problem was that it was converting a parking lot into a gym and other facilities, depriving the neighbourhood of the recreational use of the parking lot, and the fact that it was an elite private school for the priviliged. Never mind that the semis and single family Victorian houses in her neighbourhood are worth between 800k and 2.5M. Bunch of annoying, idiotic, faux hippy professionals and professors.

That neighbourhood is one reason why so many young people viscerally hate leftist hippy children of the 60s. I imagine that her neighbourhood resembles much of the population of Madison or Boulder.; 4/27/06, 9:34 PM