Edward Glaeser on Jacobs and Moses

What A City Needs

Jacobs did not oppose only highways and urban renewal, but also far more benign private projects such as NYU's library. Education is crucial to urban success. Surely a twelve-story university library would not have hurt Greenwich Village. (italics added)

No, surely it depends on the design of the library. Glaeser continues the mistake of "Euclidian" zoning and emphasizes use rather than design. A library, as marvelous as it may be in providing access to books, can simultaneously hurt the walkable sidewalk or adjacent neighborhood. A library which is not designed to support walkable urbanism (i.e. in my terminology is not designed according to the 3 Rules) indeed will hurt any walkable neighborhood or will at least not help it. Government and NGO buildings — libraries, hospitals, museums, fire stations and all the associated office buildings which support such institutions — are often the worst offenders against walkable urbanism and largely because they are and indeed snobbishly see themselves as above the market.

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Update: I urge you to read Benjamin Hemric's comment to this post. He knows a hell of a lot more than I do about Jane Jacobs and her thinking about cities.