Was Jane Jacobs for all time, or has the time of her particular relevance passed? For the better part of 50 years this once derided maverick — the august urban critic Lewis Mumford dismissed “Mother Jacobs’ home remedies” — has been an inescapable presence hovering over any discussion of city planning and development. Her 1961 book
The Death and Life of Great American Cities has been cited in behalf of preserving neighborhood scale, short blocks, respect for sidewalks and the building line, and the mix of residential with commercial. As an opponent of both the garden city ideal with its greenbelts (a Mumford pet) and large-scale projects built with what she called “cataclysmic money,” Jacobs glorified the kind of closely packed diversity she found in Manhattan’s West Village. The neighborly “eye on the street,” the low-rent loft where budding entrepreneurs could develop innovative products in close interaction with their peers — these were among the elements that made the city both safe and economically dynamic. The many elements of the Jacobs recipe came out of a minutely observed urban microcosm that she found both stimulating and congenial. So infectious was her enthusiasm for her true city that even Frank Gehry, in a presentation on Atlantic Yards, invoked the spirit of Jane Jacobs as figuring in its planning.
Now, Atlantic Yards is of course seen by many of its critics as just the kind of project Jacobs opposed. They see its size, the height of its buildings as inimical to the neighborhood quality she championed. The pedestrian-penetrable aspect of the Atlantic Yards layout and the street-level shops touted by Gehry are in the critics’ eyes no compensation for the overall size. They see a violation of Brooklyn’s traditional character. What they prefer not to think of is that Brooklyn, after all, is part of New York City — a still relatively young city famous more for its dynamically changing character than for its lasting monuments. We are somewhere between Europe, where the aged cores of cities are to a considerable degree unalterable, and Asia, where cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Bombay (now Mumbai) have kicked over most recognizable traces of their past.
In today’s world of exploding, skyward-reaching cities, strict Jane Jacobsism is hardly tenable. Which is not to say that all of her ideas are obsolete. Walkability, an active street life, a diversity of uses can be incorporated into large-scale projects so that they avoid the sterility of the “skyscraper in a park” model. This was clearly on Gehry’s mind when he invoked Jacobs.
Recognizing the pressure that “more large-scale developments are either under consideration or already underway than at any time in the last 30 years” in New York City, the Municipal Art Society with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation is presenting an exhibition, “Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York,” beginning September 25 at its Urban Center galleries, 475 Madison Avenue (more information on the website, www.futureofNY.org ). Maintaining that many New Yorkers “feel a deepening sense of alienation from the places they know and love,” in the words of the society’s Sept./Oct. newsletter, the society hopes “to initiate a citywide dialogue concerning the current direction of the city” by using “Jane Jacobs’ legacy [she died last year at 89] as a powerful model for those who want to take immediate action to ensure New York’s livability for generations to come.” In its way this is a response to the year’s earlier exhibits at the Museum of the City of New York and elsewhere that aimed to rehabilitate the reputation of Robert Moses, who was a prime target of Jacobs’ ire.
While, in conjunction with the exhibition the society is sponsoring walking tours under the heading “Jane Jacobs, Pro & Con,” clearly a major intent is to reaffirm her ideas and to question much of what is now going on, including Atlantic Yards. The society indicates its unease over Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC2030 program.
In connection with the latter it might be noted that, under Mayors Koch and Giuliani, building in the city was essentially left up to the developers, with little guidance or restraint by City Hall. Under Bloomberg that has changed through important rezoning initiatives like the Downtown Brooklyn Plan and the opening up of the city’s waterfronts to increased public use (along with residential towers). Certainly elements of these projects and their design are proper subjects for scrutiny, but we should not take the Municipal Art Society exhibition as an attempt to hamstring all development — and I don’t think the society intends that — but rather as a chance to reevaluate Jane Jacobs and to consider how much of her philosophy still has fruitful application, and to what extent it can be reconciled with the city’s need for growth.
— Henrik Krogius, Consulting Editor
Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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