Wrong

We'll probably see worse distortion of Jacobs' ideas before the dust settles but this is a pretty serious one:

The great sin of mid-century urban planning, she argued, was zoning.

Comments

[Benjamin Hemric]

While I agree that the statement ("The great sin of mid-century urban planning, she [Jacobs] argued, was zoning") is an overstatement (and also somewhat factually incorrect, as zoning is an EARLY-20th century, not a mid-20th century, phenomenon), I also think there may be more truth to the statement than one might think -- and that it's largely a matter of definitions.

In everyday conversation (at least in NYC), when people talk about "zoning" they usually aren't referring to the fact that land use or built form regulations vary according to zones, but to specific land use or height and bulk (Floor-Area-Ratio) regulations (although, theoretically speaking, these regulations could be the same for the entire city). Using this meaning of the word "zoning" (i.e., laws that regulate land use and built form), the statement is indeed something of a distortion, as Jacobs may be against poorly conceived and written land use or height and bulk regulations, but she isn't against all such regulations per se. (Although, as I think you have already pointed out elsewhere on your blog, when she is for such regulations she is for minimally intrusive such regulations.)

But the word "zoning" isn't just synonymous with land use and height and bulk regulations, it also means regulations that vary according to various districts or zones. For example, I believe, that before NYC adopted its famous zoning code in 1916, there were already various land use and built form regulations on the books. What the 1916 zoning code did however, and what made them zone-ing regulations, was to vary these regulations according to certain various "zones."

So, in this sense of the word, I think the author is correct. The very purpose of true "zone-ing" (in the original sense of the word) is not just to regulate land use and built form, but to create homogenous districts of certain uses and certain built forms, and this is indeed something that Jacobs indeed vigorously argued against.

P.S. -- Sometimes it takes me a while to complete my posts. So please excuse any posts that seem to repeat what another poster just posted -- as happened with part of a my last post in another "City Comforts" Jane Jacobs thread.

[David Sucher]

Jane Jacobs may have been against single-use Euclidean 1950s zoning. But I don't believe that there is any evidence or even hint of evidence that she was against land use planning. And as you say, she was a minimalist. But "minimal" is not "none."

The larger issue is the mis-use of her name. Theory and facts about the particulars on NYC get lost when someone in Boise starts saying "Well, Jane Jacobs was against zoning." She was against anti-urban zoning. So am I. But that doesn't mean I am against all land use regulations, and yes I do use them somewhat interchangeably because rthey usually do come as a package i.e. use maps and envelope regulatons.

Anyway, we are not getting rid of zoning. Too many people benefit from it.

[David Sucher]

An example of how such distortions can get around is that that very same paragraph starting with "The great sin of mid-century urban planning, she argued, was zoning" is offered as authority at Pandagon. Someone not familar with the subject might easily take away a rather naive view.

Btw, and maybe you can tell me if this is so — I haven't been able to find a copy of "Death & Life ..." in Seattle the past few days — is whether the parenthetical remark "(She took for granted that, in the absence of zoning regulations, mixed uses will develop.)" is accurate. It doesn't make sense to me. The reality of CBD zoning in the 1950s and 60s and 70s was that the large land-owners had (as they do now) a very large influence. Had they truly wanted to put retail in the base of their office structures or parking garages — to hell with Le Corbusier! — I suspect that salaried municipal planners, serving at the pleasure of campaign contribution-seeking mayors and city councils, might have been able to accommodate them.

[Benjamin Hemric]

By the way, in my previous post I was referring to your June 30th, 2004 post, "Boiling a zoning code down to basics," which included the following:

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On the advice of Jacobs and Toronto planner Ken Greenberg, Bedford did that in 1996 ago in the King-Spadina area by getting rid of all the ["]zoning["] rules but two: [1] new buildings could not be set back from the street, and [2] the height of new buildings had to be no greater than existing buildings. The rules would not dictate how buildings could be used [i.e., have use requirements] or how many square feet they could be [which in NYC, would be rules regulating FAR]: if the height was right and the building came out to the sidewalk, everything else was up to the owner.

To push all those zoning controls aside and allow decisions to be made not by planners and politicians but owners and the market was extraordinary, and these innovations have been terrific for the King-Spadina area. The place is humming with development.

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I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that Jacobs would probably have liked to see such so-called "zone-ing" rules applied virtually (but, admittedly, not totally) city-wide -- in which case they wouldn't really be "zone-ing" rules anymore (at least as we know zone-ing today), but city-wide height and set-back regulations for virtually the whole city. (I could see, however, where she might favor some exceptions for something like districts with heavy industry only, so I guess one could still say they would be "zone-ing" rules -- but very, very broad brush zone-ing rules.)

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To answer your question, in my opinion the statement, "She [Jacobs] took for granted that, in the absence of zoning regulations, mixed uses will develop," is indeed very much correct.

I think it doesn't make sense to you because you are mistakenly thinking only of the office building districts of which, of course, had mixed-use zoning (or as much mixed-use zoning as zoners would allow) all along anyway. But even in Midtown, by the way, not all uses were allowed, which is why (at least, supposedly) the McGraw-Hill Building and the Daily News Building were built west of Eighth Ave. and east of Third Ave., respectively. Both had printing presses that weren't allowed by zoning regulations within the core CBD. (My guess is that the printing presses of the "New York Times" were grandfathered in, but I'm not sure about this.)

But once you leave the big office building areas and go to areas like Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, Chelsea, Harlem, etc. (let alone Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, etc.) the zoning is (and still may be) overly restrictive -- and this was something that Jacobs explicity criticises in "Death and Life . . . " For instance, in "Death and Life . . . " she has quite a few paragraphs about overly restrictive zoning in Greenwich Village.

To some degree, however, outside of Greenwich Village (e.g., in areas like the Upper West Side and Harlem) overly restrictive zoning rules (e.g., requiring stores to be located only along the main avenues and not allowing them deep into the side streets) are moot, anyway, because the blocks are so long in these areas that no businessman in his right mind would open up a business deep in the middle of a long block anyway. So, practically speaking, such overly restrictive zoning is more of a problem in places like Greenwich Village with its (wonderful) short blocks. (Such mixed-use friendliness of short blocks is, of course, one of the reasons that Jacobs indeed advocates so strongly for short blocks.)

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I'm thinking of buying a new copy of "Death and Life . . ." myself. My copy is just about falling apart, and the pages are beginning to decay from age (and the acid used to bleach the paper).

I suppose (and hope) Jacobs' death will create a spike in the sales of her books. It's a pity, though, that "Death and Life . . . " is likely to be the only real beneficiary of all the talk about her since it is the one most prominently mentioned in the obits, appreciations, etc. I think her economic works ("The Economy of Cities," "Cities and the Wealth of Nations," and the "Nature of Economies") are remarkable and shed a great deal of light on "Death and Life . . . " too.

I think not reading these subsequent other works is one of the reasons a number of people, like Oussouroff (sp?) in this Sunday's "New York Times," so misunderstand what Jacobs is saying.

[Brian Miller]

All well and good, but I still would not like to live next door (or above) an automobile body shop, or a dry cleaner (perc creates plumes of toxicity that takes tens of thousands of dollars to clean up), or a electroplating works, etc., etc.

It's easy to make blanket statements like "there should be no use regulations," but this completely ignores the reality that many uses do have serious negative impacts on their neighbors. And no, I don't believe the torts system is the always the best mechanism to deal with this kind of problem.

Not that I am denying many or most zoning ordinances are filled to the three ring binders with arcane distinctions that are meaningless and ridiculous. I'll acknowledge this because I have to deal with it.

[Benjamin Hemric]

Brian, Brian . . . you "must" read / re-read "Death and Life of Great American Cities"!!! "Canny Jane" has a chapter exactly addressing your very concerns. I think the chapter is called "Myths About Diversity" -- but I don't have my copy of the book with me at the moment. Although in those days some of the specific dreaded uses were slightly different, it seems to me that her basic arguments are as valid today as they were then. (Of course, you are free to disagree with Jacobs' answers, but she does directly address the kind of concerns that you bring up.)

Please don't be insulted by my jocularity, but one of the things that first delighted me about Jane Jacobs when I first read "Death and Life . . . " (in order to do a "book review" for Freshman English) was the fact that, time and time again it seems, Mrs. Jacobs would anticipate my reservations / strong objections (like the ones you expressed above) and then address them directly.

When I first read her prescriptions regarding, I think, old buildings and mixed uses, for example, I was highly skeptical (remember, this was in the late 1960s) and thought something like, "That's crazy! How can she even THINK that?! What about . . . ?" And then a few paragraphs later, Mrs. Jacobs would write something like, "You are probably wondering about such and such, but . . . ."

The same thing has happened on a more macro scale. After reading whatever her latest book was, I would realize that I had certain reservations / objections -- and then, somewhere along the line, Mrs. Jacob would publish another book that addressed those very issues.

So your post kind of reminded me about one of the things I've most liked about Jane Jacobs.

I must admit, I still have some reservations / disagreements with Jacobs, and one of the selfish reasons I mourn her passing is that there will be no more opportunities to see if she can address and answer my remaining objections in her future books / interviews.

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P.S. -- It's interesting that you should mention electroplating.

I had a friend who, about thirty years ago, had a enormous loft in a building that also contained a rather large electroplating shop on the ground floor (with, if I remember correctly, an annex next door, too). (It just so happens that the loft was in an area that is now perhaps the very hottest neighborhood in Manhattan, the Meat Packing District. But he was only renting the loft and, because of some argument with his landlord, I believe, he never bought it before loft living became popular, when it was still dirt cheap.)

Is there something about living in close proximity to electroplating that is now considered bad for one's health (like being near high tension wires or being exposed to PERC)? If that isn't a concern, living on top of, and next to, an electroplating company didn't seem bad at all.

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To kind of supplement and update what Jacobs has to say in "Death and Life . . .":

A few doors down from me there used to be an auto body shop and some kind of trucking depot. Today, where the trucking depot was, there is a manufacturer of gourmet ravioli and, where the auto body shop was, there is a company that produces artisanal (sp?) bread (or vice versa?). But even when they were an auto body shop and a trucking depot, they really didn't pose any problem that I can recall.

Although the auto body and truck depot are gone, there is now a car wash and 24-hr. gas station across the street -- very unusual for Manhattan! -- on a very unusually shaped "sliver" of a block. But neither of them are a problem except, occasionally, the gas station-- when a new gas station attendant will play music late at night over the outdoor loudspeakers. But the management has been very nice about telling them how much of a problem it is and getting them to stop.

Other than that, I kind of like having the gas station across the street. Cab drivers, etc. hang out there all night, so I feel safer walking into my aparment house very late at night (sometimes their headlights are actually illuminating my door) -- and it's very easy to get a cab late at night on the rare occasions that I need one.

And while I may have "low" standards in this regard, my block is, indeed, a very popular one to live on.

[edward]

While in the absence of zoning regulations, mixed uses will develop, is true. The purpose of zoning is to regulate the type of mixed use. People can and will certainly difer as what constitutes good mixed use versus bad mixed use. Having a zoning code makes it more a political decision and less an economic one, than the lack of a zoning code. Good or Bad? It probably varies since politicians vary. Even voters vary. I would certainly like a convenience store nearby. I am not so certain about a gas station directly across the street, but certainly one in the neighborhood would be good. I don't know if it is matter of standards as much as it is matter of varying taste.