Interesting way to sum up the book

Jane Jacobs, Social Critic Who Redefined and Championed Cities, Is Dead at 89.

"Death and Life" made four basic recommendations for creating municipal diversity:

1. A street or district must serve several primary functions.

2. Blocks must be short.

3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use.

4. Population must be dense.

It's probably time for me to re-read it as there is something about this list which doesn't seem quite right.

First of all, I don't think Jacobs would offer "diversity" by itself as a goal. At least I hope not. Diversity is a byproduct of something else and by itself just doesn't move me.  For example, I have no problem being in some very un-diverse places e.g. Aspen, Colorado. For my own self, I don't care one wit about something as abstract as "diversity" — I just want amusing and comfortable and that does not necessarily include the obligatory person of other ethnicity to assuage my sense of liberal guilt, as I don't have any. (And my god, I'm a person of other ethnicity so why the devil should I make a big deal of  it?)

(In fact if there is any one thing which I found slightly annoying about "Death and Life" (is it too soon to be finding any flaws in her work?) is the "Oh my! Aren't we liberal as we walk down the street and exchange smiles with the Italian green-grocer!" It was almost fifty years ago and she was a girl from a small town, but there is just something slightly off about the pleasures which some people find in the simple fact of other ethnicity. Being, as I said, of "other ethnicity," I don't like to see myself as part of someone else's "one from column A and two from Column B.")

The list above also includes the very specific — "short blocks" — with the unrealistic — "variety in age, condition and use." (Does that mean it is impossible to have good suburban expansion? Jacobs was far too smart to think that.) Plus, it's repetitive: #1 and # 3 say much the same thing.

Yes I'd definitely better go back and re-read the book, which will not be a chore.

Comments

[Craig]

Jane Jacobs's use of "diversity" in 1961 is quite different from the politically-correct understanding of the word now. She used it in its original meaning of "variety."

A variety of economic uses, architectural styles and building ages. "Ethnicity" was absent as a requirement for a healthy city in her writing.

I recommend that you do re-read her if this is the impression you've come away with.

[David Sucher]

Quite right,Craig, and as I say, I do need to re-read "the book" quite soon. The initial reference to "diversity" is of course not mine but the NYT.

[Benjamin Hemric]

I think I will also go back and re-read (or, due to time contraints, at least re-skim) "Death and Life . . . .," but from my recollection of my last full re-reading of it in 1997 (I believe that that was my seventh reading of the book since 1967!), I don't see the problems that you seem to see.

I think part of the problem may be that 1) the late 1950s was a very different time (and Jacobs was up against a very different world), and 2) a number of words have changed meaning since then. To take a non-Jacobs example, originally the phrase "affirmative action" denoted following the spirt, as well as the letter, of anti-discrimination laws (e.g., removing hidden barriers to equal opportunity). But eventually the expression was used essentially as a euphemism for "racial quotas."

Also, the word "yuppie" (young urban professional) originally had positive connotations. These were the idealistic, educated young people (e.g., social workers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) who choose not to flee to the suburbs but to stay and raise their families in the city (and to populate, add diversity and stabilize areas like Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side and Park Slope). In a sense, Jane Jacobs was in perhaps the first group (or at least one of the very early groups) of "yuppies" -- but before the term came into existence. Eventually, however, "yuppie" morphed into an entirely different connotation: self-absorbed educated young people who are essentially rootless (e.g., young investment bankers traveling all the time as part of their job and moving from place to place in order to further their careers), and who make inordinate amounts of money and spend them on luxury goods (and high rent apartments they are rarely in).

So while Jacobs indeed had a life-long belief in the importance of diversity, I still don't think that the word had for her quite the same, almost exclusively "politically correct," meaning that it has today. For example, I think much of the time the diversity that she is talking about is commercial diversity -- i.e., the need for a mix of primary uses.

Also, although Jacobs does indeed believe in the importance of a residential diversity (and is against sorting -- especially when done by governmental bodies), she also seems content to observe that Park Ave. -- through the use of hired help like doormen, dog walkers, nannies, etc. -- is able to function successfully as an urban district even without true diversity.

But I also have to admit that through my many readings of Jacobs books and through my readings of various interviews, it does seem to me that there is the possiblity that Jacobs placed a higher priority on socio-economic diversity than I do. But while I also believe that socio-economic diversity can be important for a neighborhood's health, it seems to me that 1) cities and city neighborhoods are often fighting even more important impediments to their health and 2) a lack of socio-economic diversity (if not reinforced by gov't policies) is a neighborhood problem that seems somewhat self-correcting. (Overly homogenious urban neighborhoods eventually lose their cachet or even become "slums."

So the idea seems to me to cherish and foster all the various forms of diversity, to prevent near permanent homogeneity (via, for example, urban renewal programs) but to otherwise not try to "dictate" diversity at any cost.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Looking at what Jacobs actually says (as opposed to paraphrases of it), I don't see a problem:

"So long as we are content to believe that city diversity represents accident and chaos, of course its erratic generation appears to represent a mystery.

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 . . . .

To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district . . . must serve more than one primary function.

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 . . . .

4. There must be a sufficient dense concentration of people . . . .

-- p. 150 in my paperback edition

Jacobs is analyzing urban districts that have been successful over time (or have been able to spontaneously "unslum" themselves). New suburban districts, all built-up at once, are the kind of districts that are initially popular (when they are on the fringes of a city) but eventually will become outmoded and suffer from unpopularity (especially if the city eventually engulfs them) unless they are somehow made competitive again. Jacobs suggests that the way to go about making these, now urban, neighborhoods competitive again is to look to the four conditions of success that she has observed.

Item #1 and Item #3 are not at all the same thing.

In item #1 Jacobs is arguing for mixed use districts (and against overly strict zoning).

In item #3 Jacobs is arguing, if I remember correctly, against bulldozing old buildings, and that old buildings (i.e., low-rent buildings) are necessary to accommodate and foster a mix of uses and people and gradual, non-cataclismic change. (Not all business and people can afford brand new buildings; and with a diversity of buildings aging happens gracefully -- unlike something like Co-Op City, where the entire thing goes kaput at once.)

- - - - - - - -

David wrote:

. . . In fact if there is any one thing which I found slightly annoying about "Death and Life" . . . is the "Oh my! Aren't we liberal as we walk down the street and exchange smiles with the Italian green-grocer!" It was almost fifty years ago and she was a girl from a small town, but there is just something slightly off about the pleasures which some people find in the simple fact of other ethnicity. Being, as I said, of "other ethnicity," I don't like to see myself as part of someone else's "one from column A and two from Column B.")

Benjamin writes:

I don't really recall observing this tone in "Death and Life . . .," but even if I did, I don't think I'd find it much of a problem. Again, I think it's very important to remember the time in which the book was written. It seems to me that a young professional choosing to live, and bring up her kids, in an urban ethnic neighborhood (and not the suburbs) probably took a lot more explaining in those days.

The one time I do remember Jacobs making a remark of this kind, however, is when she answers the arguments of a silent interlocutor who says that the owner of the store next door might be deferential to Jacobs et al. because he feels they are of a higher class. And she points out, to answer the question that is likely on the reader's mind, that store proprietors are not thought of as being of a lower socio-economic class.

- - - - - -

The real reason I started writing this post (!) was to mention a pet notion of mine.

Jacobs says (on p. 151), "The necessity of these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make." Part of me disagrees with her here.

In light of her subsequent oeuvre, part of me half believes that the most important chapter in the book is actually the very last chapter ("The kind of problem a city is") -- the chapter that apparently very few people ever actually read.

So I think it would be interesting if people actually tried reading the last chapter first and then went to the front of the book. I wonder if it would give them a different perspective?

(Of course the book would be a lot less entertaining too, so perhaps this is an approach best reserved for those who've already read the book at least once.)

[Questioner]

I would also suggest rereading the book if you really think that there was some sort of aren't-I-liberal self-backpatting in the mention of the Italian grocer. And as the other commenter pointed out, Jacobs never said a word in Death and Life about ethnic diversity being a necessary or even important condition for a functioning city neighborhood--although she did suggest that the four conditions could play an important role in helping urban blacks overcome both racism and poverty. Unfortunately, nobody listened to her and vital black neighborhoods all over North America were destroyed for urban "renewal."

In fact, I would suggest rereading the book, period, as in these few paragraphs you seem to be misinterpreting Jacobs almost as badly as the folks who didn't read the book at all. I wonder why JJ is so easy for people to get wrong?

[Andrew Spicer]

To get a great sense of what Jane Jacobs meant by diversity, I'd recommend The Economy of Cities (instead of re-reading DLGAC).

[Benjamin Hemric]

I think another good book helpful for understanding what Jacobs means by diversity, and why she thinks it is so important, is the "Nature of Economies." It helped me a great deal.

In some ways, "Nature of Economies" is a supplement to "The Economy of Cities," but it also can be read, so it seems to me, as a stand alone. Actually, I think most people might actually find it more fun to read than "The Economy of Cities." It's in the form of a Socratic dialogue that reads like a novella.

[kieth nissen]

I was in an MAarch program at Columbia the year Death and Life came out. the book changed everything but the faculty at Columbia sure did not know that. We listened to people like harry Anthony who spoke the name Robert Moses as if he Moses, were deity. He said it like that, "Robert Moses", always both names, with reverence. Because Moses was doing what every planner wished to do. Moses was to Planners as I. M. Pei was to Architects.

I have not read Jacobs in years but one anecdote has never been dislodged. It was a street incident she told about where a relative was trying to get a little girl to go home or go to the dentist or something and obviously coercing the little girl. A scene was created. Several people on the street became observers and the facts of the situation came out; yes, it was the little girl's father and yes, everything was OK. The street and the strangers became a social system and the neighborhood redeemed itself as a protective network in spite of the apparent impersonal nature of that little part of Manhatten.

To me the story exemplifies something mentioned above (that Jacobs came from a small town; I didn't know that) about the balance of privacy versus social stability, social responsibility. Anonymity, that ultimate privacy, which seems to be an underlying goal of commentators today has to place a higher burden on official surveillance and official sanction as opposed to the highly informal, unofficial sanction of the neighborhood. Mere disapproval has its strengths and its effects.

Some people (maybe even me) move to the city and welcome the anonymity of the crowd. But we pay a price for that. Just like we pay a price for small town visibility.