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Teaching > RWU
HP150 Historic Preservation > Assignments
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| 1 Jacobs as activist. 2
Jacobs, c. 1968. 3 Jacobs, 1986. Maggie Steber,
Planning Magazine, September 1986. |
Assignment 5 — 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:
- To think about processes [and their catalysts];
- To work inductively, reasoning from particulars to the general,
rather than the reverse [rather than deductive reasoning
of planners];
- 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)
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