The Main Criticisms that Jane Jacobs Levelled at Urban Planning Thought at the Beginning of the 1960s - Essay Example

Summarise the main criticisms that Jane Jacobs levelled at urban planning thought at the beginning of the 1960s, and discuss whether her criticisms are still relevant to planners today. Jane Jacobs was a US-born Canadian urbanologist and is remembered for her works regarding the planning of cities and her criticisms. Her most famous work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is an attack on the development of urban areas being advocated by architects and engineers. Although she believed that her later works were more grave and ground-breaking, her first work is considered to be the most influential. Her later works included The Economy of Cities, Dark Age Ahead, Systems of Survival and The Nature of Economies. Jane Jacobs was not only an urban planner, she also wrote extensively on the economies that constituted cities and the ethical issues targeted libertarians. Jane Jacobs was particularly active in her role against the surge of urban renewal politics that emerged in the past-war period. She was of the view that modernist urban renewal measures destroyed cities rather than improving the social and economical conditions that needed to be addressed. In the post-war period, that is the period after the Second World War, there arose a need for the redevelopment of bombed cities. It was decided to rebuild them on an organized framework and proper planning. However, there arose many criticisms to the approach adopted by architects and engineers. The critique that Jacobs leveled at the renewal plan was normative in nature, emphasizing on the values of the planning rather than the physical design. One of her significant contributions is her perception of cities as “problems of organized complexity,” which entail “dealing simultaneously with a sizeable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole” (Jacobs 1992). One of the criticisms that Jacobs put across was the ideology of utopian comprehensiveness. In plan cities effectively and sustain the development plans, Jacobs saw the need to have an acute understanding of the way cities function. If city planners did not understand the lifestyles and needs of the residents, they would not be able to devise a plan that incorporated the needs of the community. Therefore she rejected the ideal models that emerged during post-war planning of towns and cities. According to Jacobs, Howard’s garden city model, and Le Corbusier’s vision of the city of the future and his radiant city did not explicitly illustrate a framework that fulfilled of the needs of the community and led to a more functional urban setting. Her argument was that modern city planners had little insight into the functioning of cities, their models can not relate to the requirements of the people. Thus they will not be able to facilitate healthy interactions between the individuals; with the passage of time, the model would become to weather off, doing more harm than good to the community. Jacobs termed these models as utopian in nature, having existence more in one’s imagination and with little applicability in the real world. She quotes in her book (1992, p. 17), “[Howards] aim was the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge”. Jane Jacobs was of the view that cities should be densely populated, rather than a suburban sprawl with buildings scattered amidst green patches. She advocated the development and enhancement of human ecology. In her view, human actions were largely responsible for the functioning of cities. Architectural designs did not promote urban areas that could function in an orderly. It was the high-density of population and their activities that led to a more orderly urban setting. According to Jacob, population densities of 100 units per acre could significantly promote social vivacity and encourage people to interact more easily. She was also against standardized development of densely-populated areas like multistoried apartments. Contrary to standardization methods, she was of the outlook that cities should develop spontaneously. A highly-planned city with low population densities would stifle the interactions of people and take out the color from their social lives. Concurrently, Jacobs did not solely belief in high-density of populations; rather she was of the viewpoint that diversity of activities should go hand in hand with densely populated areas. She came up wit this philosophy after closely observing the lifestyles of people living in urban settings. This was in conflict with the thinking of modern architects and city planners who believed in having segregated areas for corporate offices, residential colonies, markets etc. In her view, there should be mixed uses of the city, where one area can provide an assortment of services from houses to markets and offices. To increase the interactions of the people, city planners wanted to model residential settings in such a way that people would keep bumping into each other. However, Jacobs realized the non-feasibility of this plan. She knew that there were many different cultures residing in the UK, often with incompatible values and practices. Increasing interaction like this would disrupt the peace of the neighborhood and can increase racial and cultural tension, which substantiated Jacob’s views of utopian comprehensiveness projected by city planners. In order to promote interactions of the people, Jacobs was in favor of pedestrian-friendly blocks and streets. She said that sidewalks constitute an integral pert of city life, with students, professionals, workers, in fact everyone using them on a daily basis. Streets are bound with circulation and in their own right are equally as important to cities as circulation (Bridge & Watson 2010). In contrast to that, modern city planners promoted the cause of segregating side walks and parks and other public spaces from roads. She mocked at the planning models presented by Robert Moses and Le Corbusier who included as many parks as they can fit into their model. Jacobs felt that having so many parks would scatter the individuals and hence decrease the number of people per park. Therefore many of them would remain deserted, promoting criminal activities. Also, modern city planners favored the development of a highway that crossed through the neighborhood; Jacobs was against this idea since she believed that having a highway running through the neighborhood would create a border vacuum, and would deter people from taking walks for relaxation and recreational purposes as they would do on sidewalks. Euclidean zoning included the demolishment of old buildings in order to create modern, more sophisticated buildings. However, Jacobs thought that old buildings would serve a lot of social and economical benefits; these can include low-cost offices and markets. Old buildings, interspersed with new buildings, was what constituted her stance on a well-functioning urban settlement. Thus, for her criticism against urban renewal, she was popular as an anti-urban city planner, her views conflicting with popular city planners like Le Corbusier’s. In her book (1992), Jacobs has criticized new Urbanists strongly, “[T]he New Urbanists want to have lively centers in the places that they develop, where people run into each other doing errands and that sort of thing. And yet, from what Ive seen of their plans and the places they have built, they dont seem to have a sense of the anatomy of these hearts, these centers. Theyve placed them as if they were shopping centers. They dont connect”. Although she was largely criticized by developers and city planners, her thinking has contributed to much deeper insights into the way cities function. The principles that she endoresed-challenging traditional assumptions, enhacing diversity, incrementing neighborhood knowledge and putting urban space to good use- are as impotant today as they were in the 1950s and 1960s (Mennel et al. 2007). According to Amanda Burden (2006), Jane Jacobs legacy is now the prevailing force in New York, although Robert Moses contributed the most in reforming urban architecture in New York. Robert Moses did not give due appreciation to the importance of neighborhoods. Jacobs works are more applicable and useful for city planners because they incorporate the essence of values that are deeply ingrained in the society. People would feel more stable in a settlement that provides security and has a pedestrian-friendly environment that promotes healthier interactions with neighbors. Also, given the relative scarcity of resources and the prefixed budget, segregating sectors is not cost-effective. Rather Jacobs multi-disciplinary approach of integrating houses, offices etc together and providing a diversity of services in a unit neighborhood is economical. Planning today is a mutual process, where the planners and citizens interact in order to formulate a model that is shaped on the lines of the needs of the society. A model that does not encompass the recommendations of the public will not have long-term effects. Thus, Jacobs emphasis on the rich details of urban life has helped contemporary city planners to design cities according to the requirements of the city-dwellers: the people who actually live and experience the impact of city planning. A lifetime of thinking has led Jacobs into the ‘new science’, which explains that there is a complex order behind the interweaving of many components; just like Jane Jacobs envisioned cities (Alexiou 2006). References Alexiou, A. S., 2006. Jane Jacobs: urban visionary. Piscataway (NJ): Rutgers University Press. Bridge, G. & Watson, S., 2010. The Blackwell City Reader. 2nd ed. Malden (MA): John Wiley and Sons. Burden, A., 2006. Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses And City Planning Today. [Online] Available at: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/fea/20061106/202/2015 [Accessed at 12 May 2010]. Jacobs, J., 1992. The death and life of great American cities. Vintage Books. Mennel, T., Steffens, J. & Klemek, C., 2007. Block by block: Jane Jacobs and the future of New York. Princeton Architectural Press Read More