Jane Jacobs

Lewis Mumford, the respected architecture critic for the New Yorker, dismissed her in a 1962 review, titled “Mother Jacobs Home Remedies,” as an interesting writer whose ideas were horribly wrong. She has been variously belittled as either an amateur or a gadfly. Yet, Jane Jacobs has profoundly changed the way we think about, develop and preserve our urban centers.

Her 1962 polemic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” took dead aim at popular notions held by architects and planners about how cities should be built and how they function. Using common sense and an uncommon gift for observation, Jacobs skewered the conventional wisdom of Modernism, arguing that cities are defined not by grand buildings but by corner groceries. She lambasted city builders for obsessing over aesthetic ideals when they should have been observing how people actually live and cities really work. All this from a Pennsylvania-born college dropout who moved to Manhattan, married an architect, the late Robert Jacobs, and raised three children.

In the 35 years since her first book was published, many of Jacobs’ ideas have been embraced and put into practice by the very planners and architects who were objects of her ire. Population density is now seen as a plus for cities. Adapting older buildings for new use is popular among preservationists. Even the sidewalk, for Jacobs the great symbol of the city, is making a comeback.

Jacobs followed her first work with further observations in “The Economy of Cities” (1969), “Cities and the Wealth of Nations” (1984) and “Systems of Survival” (1992), and secured a place as a serious intellectual. Along the way, she became an expatriate, moving to Canada in protest against the Vietnam War. She is accepted in her adopted Toronto as a local hero. This week, a who’s who of urban thinkers will gather there for a five-day symposium, called “Ideas That Matter,” dedicated to Jacobs.

Now 81, Jacobs is active and quick to point out a folly or suggest an unusual solution to a thorny problem. In a conversation from her Toronto home, she revealed her scathing wit, blunt assessments and still unconventional views about the best ways to develop and preserve our urban experience.

Question: Los Angeles has a number of major architectural projects in progress--the new cathedral, Disney Hall, a sports arena and the new Getty Center. Many feel these will be cornerstones in the city’s redevelopment. Are we making a mistake by expecting these grand buildings to somehow revitalize our community?

Answer: I’ve always felt that cities need that sort of thing seeded around in various places, but it’s a disaster when they’re all gathered in one big pastry tray. By themselves, they’ll never create a new sense of community. But if they’re mixed with residences, workplaces and stores, they’ll be important additions. A common mistake is for people to look at a distressed part of a city and ask what’s wrong with it. But they don’t consider what’s already there and look at those things as assets. If the museums, cathedrals and concert halls are designed as additions to an existing mixture, they’re likely to have a constructive effect.

Q: At the heart of your thinking about urban life is a fairly simple concept--that a city cannot be a work of art. What do you mean when you say that?

A: A city can and should have works of art within it, but a city is simply not a work of art. Art is a selection from life. Artists select to point out things, and to give focus to their vision. But life is not a matter of that kind of selection. And a city must be all kinds of things. It would be a very sterile place were it a work of art. It would be like taxidermy, not like life.

Q: Another one of your tenets is that change within cities happens in a regular, organic way, and the kind of change many urban planners want to impose is often alienating, even insulting. How should cities change over time?

A: Everything that is alive is in process, and nothing is static. You can’t expect to make something and freeze it for all time thereafter. You have to accept alterations, and build for flexibility. It would be wonderful if architects and planners thought about this more. There’s a very good book by Stewart Brand called “How Buildings Learn,” in which he emphasizes this. But it’s very discouraging that I can find few architects who are interested in that book.

There are some architects, mostly working on hospitals and industrial buildings, who understand the importance of flexibility in a building. These are places where people know that buildings need to change with changes in technology, but this understanding has yet to filter down to those designing most of the ordinary buildings in our cities. And yet, change happens; for instance, in Toronto we have a number of churches that have turned into art galleries, retail stores, all kinds of things. The church buildings have proved very adaptable to these kind of things, though no doubt it would give horrors to the architects who built them.

Q: Related to this is your statement that every generation despises the architecture of the previous generation. If that’s true, how can an architect ever design something that will remain meaningful to people in the future?

A: It doesn’t happen every time, but, generally, a generation comes along which detests what the previous generation did in architecture and site planning. This has happened through history. When I was a child, the worst thing you could say was that something was Victorian. Now Victorian is treasured again. And now there is a revulsion against Modernism--you must have noticed. Almost certainly in the future there will be a time when people will be delighted that little enclaves of Modern have been saved, and it will be appreciated, the way Art Deco is being celebrated again. But you can be sure of one thing: The architecture and site planning that is being created now will be despised at some point. In fact, that process may have already begun.

Q: But if architecture falls out of favor, it often gets replaced, as we in Los Angeles know so well.

A: Yes, isn’t that foolish. I think the people of Los Angeles should take a long look at the concept of preservation, and not put so much faith in the belief that the tastes of this particular decade are the right ones.

Q: Maybe the tearing down is part of the self-loathing city dwellers have in America--the feeling that truth and good are in the rural heartland, that cities are somehow evil, and we have to pick at them.

A: That seems so stupid to me, and against all observation. It’s not an ancient idea. In history, the city was an admirable place; that’s why we have the expression, “The City of God.” Rome, Constantinople, Paris, these are cities that are exalted. This notion of cities being the harborers of evil is a relatively modern one.

Cities are the mothers of economic development, not because people are smarter in cities, but because of the conditions of density. There is a concentration of need in cities, and a greater incentive to address problems in ways that haven’t been addressed before. This is the essence of economic development. Without it, we’d all be poor.

Q: And this goes to another of your dictums: The problem is prosperity, not poverty.

A: It’s only with development and trade that poverty is overcome. The most rural places, without cities to act as their economic motors, are the poorest. Ethiopia is somewhere close to 90% rural, and it’s no accident that it’s so poor. All through organized human history, if you wanted prosperity, you’ve had to have cities. Places that attract new people, with new ideas.

Q: Like Los Angeles? Much of the economic recovery here has been driven by small businesses, many run by recent arrivals to the city.

A: That’s promising, because small things are getting a chance to grow, which is the basis of a healthy economy. It’s also promising because it shows that newcomers have a chance, and that demonstrates that it’s a cosmopolitan place. It also means the city will have new things it didn’t have before, because newcomers bring those with them. They bring new ways of looking at things, and maybe even new ways of solving old problems. I think what’s happened to Los Angeles is much more promising than if the city had held onto the big defense contracts and aerospace jobs. That might have been called stability, but it would have been foretelling a great abyss for the future.

Q: Great cities are generally characterized by density of population, but most U.S. cities grow not by adding density, but by sprawling out. Los Angeles is the model for that, yet, today it is one of the few cities where density is increasing. So would that be promising as well?

A: That’s a good sign, too. Of course, there are all kinds of ways to increase density. You can do it by building up and leaving the land around it very sterile--Le Corbusier’s idea of how to get density. Or you can do it by focusing on small projects, filling in, repurposing buildings, taking advantage of existing assets. How it’s done is of the essence, but I think increasing the density in a city like Los Angeles is all for the good.

Q: Yet, that density is contributing to an ever-increasing transportation problem. Do you have any ideas how we might begin to tackle that?

A: Yes, I do. And it applies not just to Los Angeles, but to any city where low densities mean mass transit doesn’t make sense. It’s also a case where we can learn from other cities. In many places in the Third World, there are very complex, semi-public transportation systems. People drive mini-vans, and they pick their own routes and set their own fares. It’s amazing how well this works in places where one would never be able to imagine setting up a traditional public-transit system. This should be permitted in America. Make sure the drivers are licensed and insured, let them respond to the need. They’ll go where the customers are and be there at the right hours. This is much more flexible than any institutionalized bus service.

Los Angeles is at a perfect moment to break the mold and try something like this, precisely because it has attracted so many new immigrants. A lot of them come from places where they have these kinds of transportation arrangements. They know much more about them than do Americans. It’s an ideal time for any number of American cities to try something like this.

Q: Meanwhile, people of means in Los Angeles are turning increasingly inward, living behind walls and gates. That doesn’t seem to be a social positive, but how do you suggest reversing this trend?

A: Of course, this is a profound sign of the decay of community. Better to look to places where people really want to build a community and are struggling to do it. It’s easier. I believe in all human endeavors, we do best when we start with the easiest thing. It’s stupid to try the most difficult thing--you haven’t a clue. So forget about those people who want their gated communities; just let that go. Go to a place where people are trying to make something happen, and where they’re often thwarted.

Q: You’ve never been shy about pointing out what you’ve seen as hubristic attitudes among modern planners and architects. And, to some degree, they’ve paid attention. How do you think you’ve changed mainstream attitudes about city building, and what are your great successes?

A: I don’t think I’ve had any great successes, and any changes for the better I can hardly credit to myself. I give it to a great many people who worked in their neighborhood, or went to city hall to make sure they got the right thing. Of course, architecture and site planning have changed since I wrote my first book. But it’s because what they were doing so obviously didn’t work. And yet, you still find the same kind of stupid mega-projects being pushed, and we still have politicians who aren’t interested unless it’s something big and ostentatious. I don’t feel complacent at all.

Q: Are you optimistic about the fate of America’s cities?

A: I’d say they’re in a lot worse shape than they were in 1961, when I wrote that book. I called it “The Death and Life of the Great American City,” not “The Life and Death,” because I wanted to convey a sense of optimism. Today, I’m not so optimistic. I hope I’m wrong. But then, there’s always young people coming along, and there’s always the old geezers who are dying off, and that’s the greatest reason for optimism in the world.