Kenneth Jackson

Los Angeles is a city built on myth, where perception often clouds reality. Over the past-quarter century, while the rest of the country was talking about the suburbs, Los Angeles was building a downtown, which today is far more vital than that of many cities. As we were looked upon as the epitome of urban sprawl, Los Angeles was increasing in population density. While cities like Detroit and St. Louis were being eviscerated by suburban exodus, life in Los Angeles proper has intensified.

Yet, Los Angeles suffers from the same pattern that plagues many U.S. cities. Upper-income families continue to move to suburbs outside city limits, taking their tax dollars with them. And even for many within the boundaries of Los Angeles, downtown is a place one goes only out of necessity. Meanwhile, a secessionist movement remains active in the San Fernando Valley, and politicians and community leaders grapple with issues that pit neighborhood control against the needs of the city as a whole.

There are those who believe that cities are obsolete, and that a combination of communications technology and changing demographics favor the development of low-density suburbs over concentrated central-business and residential districts. Yet,the lure of the metropolis remains, and there are even signs that Americans, bored by strip malls and drive-throughs, are again embracing the diversity of urban experience.

Kenneth T. Jackson falls in the later group. The chair of the history department at New York’s Columbia University, he’s a long-time student of human communities. Jackson is author of the critically acclaimed “Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of America,” as well as editor of the 1,300-page “Encyclopedia of New York City.” While recognizing the importance of suburbs, Jackson thinks Americans are unique in failing to recognize the efficiencies and dynamism that come from living together in close quarters. The struggle between the city and the suburb is evident in the 57-year-old Jackson’s life; he and his wife divide their time between a Manhattan apartment and a home in Chappaqua, 30 miles north of the city.

Jackson, a native of Memphis, taught at UCLA in the mid-80s. He declares himself a fan of Los Angeles, “though I realize in many quarters that might not be cool to say.” In a conversation from his suburban home, he discussed the business of living in cities, the American suburban ideal and the revival of interest in the benefits of urban life.

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Question: The cities in the United States were created by an immigrant culture. How did the fact that we all came here to get away from somewhere else effect the way we made our cities?

Answer: People who come to America have always suffered from the incompatibility of two ideals. One is the desire for community, the notion that in the enjoyment of others there is enrichment and satisfaction. When Samuel Johnson said, “When one is tired of London, one is tired of life,” he was thinking of that kind of community. The other American ideal is individualism, and that often means having a private space, walled off from the world, where one can find solitude and focus on the inner life.

Where and how one lives is at least to some degree a matter of choice. And Americans have made certain choices about where and how to live. We began to idealize the single-family house even before the turn of the 19th century, and it became the embodiment of the American dream. Meanwhile, in Paris, the middle and upper classes all moved into apartments built along wide boulevards, and even today the ideal way to live in France is in a grand apartment in Paris. They made different choices.

Q: But couldn’t the American preference for a house with a front and back yard be as much about the vast space in this country as it is about individualism?

A: There’s something to that, because space is plentiful and land relatively cheap, compared to the rest of the world. But there’s something instructive about Southern California in that regard. There’s a lot of space in Southern California, but land prices are relatively high, and therefore density is relatively high.

The prevailing myth is that Los Angeles is a low-density metropolis. It isn’t. Houston or Oklahoma City are much lower in density. In the Los Angeles area much of the land is too hilly to be developed, and large parts of it are dedicated to parks and preserves--which is now holding the city in, and leading to greater compaction. But for the most part, densities in American cities and suburbs are very low, compared to other countries. We have some suburban areas where population densities are lower than in rural farm areas. The reason for this has to do with public policy, with choices we’ve made.

. . . While Asians and Europeans and Australians are creating public policy to increase density in their cities, we’re debating whether cities are even necessary. We debate whether technology and telecommunications will make cities obsolete. But I believe, as do many, that cities do matter.

Q: Haven’t you said cities are the greatest technical achievement of mankind?

A: And not just the cities, but the suburbs as well. If we were all destroyed by nerve gas and aliens came down to look at the Earth, what they would find most unusual about human settlement patterns would be the American single-family home surrounded by a yard. Other countries have huge skyscrapers and massive sports stadiums, but what the aliens would find unusual is the way we live.

The model of the American city at the end of this century is a doughnut. In the center, there’s very little. There may be some tall buildings, but there’s no energy at 8 p.m. All the life and the wealth is around the edges. In general, and Los Angeles is an exception, density has actually gone down. Many, many cities, such as Detroit and St. Louis have lost as much as half their population since the 1950s. The cities that have grown--Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix--have done so by expanding their boundaries.

In America, movement has been given a very high status. The freeways, the wide streets, the percentage of land given over to pavement is a way of saying that mobility is an ideal, and walking is not so important.

Q: Will technology, and advances in communication make mobility less important?

A: Clearly it will change things. But I think the technological changes of our time are clearly less impressive than those of our grandparents or our great-grandparents. Think of the period between 1870 and 1940, when you get everything from electricity to telephones and radios, internal combustion engines and airplanes. If you were born in 1940, things look pretty much the same today. We’ve got the computers, but has life really changed? And remember, when the telephone came along, people speculated that it would mean the end of cities. Of course it didn’t play out that way. The telephone, in conjunction with the elevator and steel-frame construction were what made central business districts possible. Finally, I notice that people in the high-tech industries tend to concentrate in places like Seattle, Silicon Valley, and in Lower Manhattan--they call that Silicon Alley. They seem to understand the value of rubbing shoulders.

And in fact, there is a kind of renaissance in many American cities. The malls are getting boring. We only spend half as much time in malls as we did a generation ago. Americans are looking for the diversity that only a real city can offer. But I think the communications revolution is having far less effect on cities than, for instance, the low cost of gasoline.

Q: Fully half of all Americans now live in suburbs, while cities dwindle in population. What is the relationship between today’s cities and suburbs, and what responsibilities does each have toward the other?

A: When an American says he doesn’t like cities, it’s probably because he’s thinking of poor people. That’s because we’ve decided to concentrate our public housing in cities. But in fact, the very word suburb means sub-urban, or below the city. The first residents of the suburbs were outcasts. This was the home to the very poor, to tanneries and brothels. It’s only been in the last 150 years that we’ve flipped that, and placed the greatest value on the outside of the city.

It’s wonderful to have a fenced yard where your children can play, and where you can garden. In America, that has been achievable.

But we’ve gone so far in that pursuit that we’ve forgotten that density also has its advantages. Sure, there are problems with traffic and pollution, but there are unmatched opportunities in a city, simply because so many people have come together. We don’t celebrate that very often. I think that the dramatic decrease in crime in cities like New York will lead to a rediscovery of the benefits of high density living.

Q: This brings up a curious irony. Why is it that concentrations of people in cities seem to breed a high level of diversity, whereas suburbs are classically homogenous?

A: Every city has a unique character, while every suburb looks pretty much the same. And that’s why cities are growing as attractions, as entertainment centers. For all its problems, Cleveland is fairly unique. But a mall in suburban Cleveland is not too different from a mall in suburban Denver.

Q: There is in this city a separatist movement among some residents in the San Fernando Valley, who’d like to secede from Los Angeles, and go it on their own. Is this just another case of suburbanites abandoning the inner city?

A: I’m personally opposed to these secessionist movements. I think we need to move in the opposite direction. We’re already more Balkanized than anybody else in the world, and this will only exacerbate this. And it’s not unique to Los Angeles. Staten Island in New York City is trying the same thing. If you live in a nice neighborhood, and some of your tax money is being drained away for things that don’t directly benefit you, you react in the American way and say, “Let’s just get out, and use our tax money for ourselves.”

But the whole notion of community is based on sharing. Our public institutions exist because we levy a tax on everybody. Just because you don’t have a child in public schools doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support those schools. But it seems that we look at things ever more selfishly in the United States, and it’s a pernicious trend which is not being countered by anything.

Q: Los Angeles has been working for two generations to make its downtown a more vital place. Now there are plans for a new downtown sports arena, a revamped Dodger Stadium and an upgraded transportation corridor into the central business district. What’s your advice for urban planners here?

A: The tired saw about Los Angeles is that it’s 100 suburbs looking for a city. But there’s come to be a city there--downtown Los Angeles is a real place now. In the last 20 years it’s been transformed. I think the subway may make some difference. It’s the largest city in the world without a good public transportation system. I know it’s getting better but to call it good would be stretching it. And there’s a real question whether a city can get to 10 or 15 million people and continue to function without good public transportation.

Q: But I’ve heard some optimism from you about cities and suburbs, or am I wrong?

A: No, you’ve heard some optimism. You mentioned the revamping of Dodger Stadium and a new downtown sports arena. Now, look at Baltimore--25 years ago it was the sin city of the East Coast. It had a famous neighborhood called “The Block,” which was full of various kinds of unsavory entertainment. Cleveland was even worse, it was just an empty hole. Now, though both cities still have problems, they’ve shown that you can turn around the image of a place. The baseball stadiums these cities built are in downtown, and they’re woven into the fabric of the city. There is a renaissance in interest in the city as spectacle, as entertainment. So there’s reason to be optimistic, and everything is not worse.

On the other hand, the United States is still suburbanizing, still sprawling out, and central business districts all over the country are in disrepair. And that’s a problem, because it’s very hard to change people’s perceptions. Once they say they haven’t been to downtown in 20 years, it’s very hard to get them to go back.