Jane Jacobs’ Lesson: Look and Learn

An Appreciation. Bloomberg, April 27, 2006

It is impossible to walk down the intimate streets of the West Village lined with stoops and fire escapes in New York and not think of Jane Jacobs. Those streets are rather different now than they were in the late 1950s, when she was writing her most famous book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

Most of that change is for the good. The sidewalks are cleaner and the buildings are spiffier, which our keenest observer of city blocks would no doubt have appreciated. They are also far quieter (having gentrified), and far less diverse, which Jacobs liked less.

That Village tenements once deemed “blighted” were instead restored, though, would simply not have happened—as similar improvements would not have happened all over America—without her.

Jacobs’ influence, which has only grown since the 1961 publication of “Death and Life” (it’s still in print), will likely continue undimmed, even though she died Tuesday in Toronto at the age of 89. Her succinct advice, to “look closely at real cities,” to “listen, linger and think about what you see,” has been taken to heart by millions.

Decried in the 1960s as essentially an uppity housewife by New York's redevelopment czar Robert Moses, Jacobs’s writing and activism inspired ordinary citizens to challenge the almost unbridled power he wielded. Washington Square Park is not cast into darkness by an elevated freeway in part because of her. The vibrant web of crooked, hidden streets in the West Village, and the surprising calm of its leftover squares, like little urban eddies, would have become a vapid, empty landscape of “urban renewal” without her.

There has never been a more vivid chronicler of “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” than Jacobs. In probably the most famous passage of “Death and Life” she describes how people doing everyday things create “a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city.” Merely sweeping up litter and taking out the trash brought out “a constant succession of eyes,” which made neighborhoods safe. The street ballet was an “order composed of movement and change,” where everyone who passed by played “distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.”

Although those passages still inspire, Jacobs was no mere romantic—though she was frequently depicted as one. She was a keen analyst who, as her life went on, looked increasingly at the bigger picture.

“Cities and the Wealth of Nations,” published in 1984, was another Jacobs-style giant-killer. In it she took on no less than the unquestioned assumption by economists that capital is ever fluid and moves unimpeded in pursuit of opportunity. That cash must come from somewhere, she argued, and that somewhere was the physical reality of cities. Their actions and their vitality created capital. It was cities, efficient or dysfunctional, that could enlarge or impede its flow.

Jacobs, who had not graduated from college, let alone in so rarified a field as economics, demanded that experts understand cities by looking at a little village outside Toronto. It farmed marigold seeds, made ceramics and hosted a well-regarded restaurant.

Those activities were just a few tendrils that in successful urban regions build into dense networks of urban economic interaction. In that sense, her work always harkened back to “Death and Life,” in which she implored the master urban planners of the 1960s to descend from their empyrean heights and consider the stabilizing potential of the corner butcher.

The title of Jacobs’ last published book, “Dark Age Ahead” (2004) evokes a gloom that can descend over the aged. She decried the unraveling of social institutions—the family, education, professionalism, science, “dumbed down taxes.” She leavened her dire prophecy by puncturing simplistic abstractions at every turn in favor of the “tangible, boring details” that speak more deeply.

Cities sink under the weight of regulations that aren’t aimed at performance, she wrote. They should cut to the chase: reducing noise, calming heavy traffic, maintaining access to sun and sky.

She never stopped looking and listening. She was working on a book when she died. It didn’t yet have a title.

She also continued to inspire new generations to look and listen, advising the Center for the Living City at Purchase College of the State University of New York. Its students recently traveled to New Orleans, where they interviewed ordinary citizens as well as ministers, musicians and preservationists. The Museum of the City of New York is displaying those stories through June. She planned to attend a reception in her honor on May 4, what would have been her 90th birthday.

In “Death and Life,” Jacobs writes of standing at a bus stop when a woman “vigorously yoo-hooed at me” from the third-floor window of a tenement across the street, informing her that the bus didn’t run on Saturdays. The woman was, Jacobs added, “one of the people who casually take care of the streets.”

In her long and productive life, that’s what Jane Jacobs did for us all.

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	Jane Jacobs’ Lesson: Look and Learn An Appreciation. Bloomberg, April 27, 2006 It is impossible to walk down the intimate streets of the West Village lined with stoops and fire escapes in New York and not think of Jane Jacobs. Those streets are rather different now than they were in the late 1950s, when she was writing her most famous book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Most of that change is for the good. The sidewalks are cleaner and the buildings are spiffier, which our keenest observer of city blocks would no doubt have appreciated. They are also far quieter (having gentrified), and far less diverse, which Jacobs liked less. That Village tenements once deemed “blighted” were instead restored, though, would simply not have happened—as similar improvements would not have happened all over America—without her. Jacobs’ influence, which has only grown since the 1961 publication of “Death and Life” (it’s still in print), will likely continue undimmed, even though she died Tuesday in Toronto at the age of 89. Her succinct advice, to “look closely at real cities,” to “listen, linger and think about what you see,” has been taken to heart by millions. Decried in the 1960s as essentially an uppity housewife by New York's redevelopment czar Robert Moses, Jacobs’s writing and activism inspired ordinary citizens to challenge the almost unbridled power he wielded. Washington Square Park is not cast into darkness by an elevated freeway in part because of her. The vibrant web of crooked, hidden streets in the West Village, and the surprising calm of its leftover squares, like little urban eddies, would have become a vapid, empty landscape of “urban renewal” without her. There has never been a more vivid chronicler of “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” than Jacobs. In probably the most famous passage of “Death and Life” she describes how people doing everyday things create “a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city.” Merely sweeping up litter and taking out the trash brought out “a constant succession of eyes,” which made neighborhoods safe. The street ballet was an “order composed of movement and change,” where everyone who passed by played “distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.” Although those passages still inspire, Jacobs was no mere romantic—though she was frequently depicted as one. She was a keen analyst who, as her life went on, looked increasingly at the bigger picture. “Cities and the Wealth of Nations,” published in 1984, was another Jacobs-style giant-killer. In it she took on no less than the unquestioned assumption by economists that capital is ever fluid and moves unimpeded in pursuit of opportunity. That cash must come from somewhere, she argued, and that somewhere was the physical reality of cities. Their actions and their vitality created capital. It was cities, efficient or dysfunctional, that could enlarge or impede its flow. Jacobs, who had not graduated from college, let alone in so rarified a field as economics, demanded that experts understand cities by looking at a little village outside Toronto. It farmed marigold seeds, made ceramics and hosted a well-regarded restaurant. Those activities were just a few tendrils that in successful urban regions build into dense networks of urban economic interaction. In that sense, her work always harkened back to “Death and Life,” in which she implored the master urban planners of the 1960s to descend from their empyrean heights and consider the stabilizing potential of the corner butcher. The title of Jacobs’ last published book, “Dark Age Ahead” (2004) evokes a gloom that can descend over the aged. She decried the unraveling of social institutions—the family, education, professionalism, science, “dumbed down taxes.” She leavened her dire prophecy by puncturing simplistic abstractions at every turn in favor of the “tangible, boring details” that speak more deeply. Cities sink under the weight of regulations that aren’t aimed at performance, she wrote. They should cut to the chase: reducing noise, calming heavy traffic, maintaining access to sun and sky. She never stopped looking and listening. She was working on a book when she died. It didn’t yet have a title. She also continued to inspire new generations to look and listen, advising the Center for the Living City at Purchase College of the State University of New York. Its students recently traveled to New Orleans, where they interviewed ordinary citizens as well as ministers, musicians and preservationists. The Museum of the City of New York is displaying those stories through June. She planned to attend a reception in her honor on May 4, what would have been her 90th birthday. In “Death and Life,” Jacobs writes of standing at a bus stop when a woman “vigorously yoo-hooed at me” from the third-floor window of a tenement across the street, informing her that the bus didn’t run on Saturdays. The woman was, Jacobs added, “one of the people who casually take care of the streets.” In her long and productive life, that’s what Jane Jacobs did for us all.
© copyright 2006 James S. Russell \| terms