Zoey Weissman

Leonard Nevarez

URBS 200

9 March 2017

Discuss Jane Jacobs critique of the Modernist urban planning

tradition. How does this tradition, exemplified by the decentralist
perspective and Le Corbusiers Radiant City, understand and seek to
intervene in the city? CHECK. How does Jacobs understand and seek
to intervene in the city? FIND THE THINGS SHE In turn, what
common assumptions do Jane Jacobs and Modernist urban planners
share about the influence that modernist urban planners share
about the influence that planning can have on urban life?
 URBS Midterm

This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. Jane

Jacobs chose this rebuke to open her Death and Life of Great American

Cities, setting a critical tone for the work that follows. Hardly a page passes

where Jacobs does not excoriate the city planning of her day, whose methods

she believes were devised for undermining [cities] economies and killing

them. (28). This Modernist urban planning Jacobs so loathes ultimately call

for a decentralized city featuring distinct zones for specified commercial,

residential, or transit purposes. Jane Jacobs believes nearly the exact

opposite. Her axiom for effective cities is diversity; diversity in usage of

spaces, of architecture, and of the city populace itself.

In contrast to Jane Jacobs theories, mid-twentieth century planning

often began with the precept of dense urbanism as a problem; therefore,

planning solutions sought to remedy living spaces of qualities that

encouraged such urbanism. In order to understand this approach, we must

first consider the utopian visions of Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier. Their

dreams of Garden City or Radiant City, while divergent in actual detail, both

demand specified areas with explicit purposes commerce, work, residential,

transit which ideally would not overlap. Planners, architects, and financiers

all proved to be apt disciples of this dogma; what was considered good

planning segregated modes of human life. Many contemporary projects

exemplify this claim, such as the interstate highway systems which dually
destroyed many mixed use, dense city neighborhoods that Jacobs venerates

in order to create a means for certain desirable members of the population

to live in one area and work entirely in another. This tradition affected more

than actual works done in the city, it affected how the city itself was viewed.

The streets and sidewalks were seen as bad environments for humans to

loiter upon. Parks and green spaces should be isolated and contained from

commerce and business areas. Crowds were undesirable mere presence of

crowds was undesirable

Weve got to get those people off the street

The street is bad as an environment for humans houses should be

turned away from it and faced inward, towards sheltered greens. Frequent

streets are wasteful, of advantage only to real estate speculators who

measure value by the front foot. The basic unit of city design is not the

street, but the block and more particularly the super-block. Commerce

should be segregated from residences and greens. A neighborhoods demand

for goods should be calculated scientifically, and this much and no more

commercial space allocated. The presense of many other people is, at best, a

necessary evil, and good city planning must aim for at least an illusion of

isolation and suburbany privacy. . planned community must be islanded

off as a self-contained unit, that it must resist future change, and that every

significant detail must be controlled by the planners

planned community must be islanded off as a self-contained unit, that it

must resist future change, and that every significant detail must be
controlled by the planners from the start and then stuck to. In short, good
planning was projecting planning.

Predicated upon the utopian visions of Ebenezer Howard and Le

Corbusier, modernist planning. According to this style, predicated upon the

utopian visions of Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, ; therefore, solutions

to city problems sought to remedy the city of its urban qualities. This is

evident when considering the vast urban renewal projects of the mid-

twentieth century, which included the subsidization of suburban living for

non-Black Americans, the massive interstate highway system that to the city

and sought to mitigate its issues by encouraging delineated zones of use.

This style was predicated on the theories of urban utopiasts Ebenezer

Howard and Le Corbusier, who

How does this tradition, exemplified by the decentralist perspective and Le

Corbusiers Radiant City, understand and seek to intervene in the city?

From beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment

on urban-renewal law, the entire concoction is irrelevant to the workings of

cities. Unstudied, unrespected, cities have served as sacrificial victims.

differing ideas of a Garden City and Radiant City from the urban

utopiasts Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, whose ideas of a Garden City

and the Radiant City Ebenezer Howards Garden City and later

Indeed, much of the Modernist planning of the mid twentieth century

sought to disperse cities, clearly demarcating certain zones for certain

functions and nothing more.

 Thesis: Modernist planners believed XYZ and Jacobs believed This.

Because she frames her books so strongly as a critique, she gets stuck in this

mindset where planners have to do everything. IDK.

Jacobs , inspired by Ebenezer Howards Garden City and later Le

Corbusiers Radiant city, sought to intervene in the city that mitigated

planning of the day An analysis of the theories that inspired the Modernist

planning, or dreams as Jacob would prefer I write, reveals that wthatwould

call them, that inspired Modernist planning, one considers that perhaps

Jacobs scathing words were necessary. Upon analysis of the origins of

contemporary City planning, she may have a point.

Discuss Jane Jacobs critique of the Modernist urban planning

tradition. How does this tradition, exemplified by the decentralist
perspective and Le Corbusiers Radiant City, understand and seek to
intervene in the city? CHECK. How does Jacobs understand and seek
to intervene in the city? FIND THE THINGS SHE In turn, what
common assumptions do Jane Jacobs and Modernist urban planners
share about the influence that modernist urban planners share
about the influence that planning can have on urban life?

Jacobs assumes that the planners are the end all be all. Idk.

The street is bad as an environment for humans houses should be turned

away from it and faced inward, towards sheltered greens. Frequent streets
are wasteful, of advantage only to real estate speculators who measure
value by the front foot. The basic unit of city design is not the street, but the
block and more particularly the super-block. Commerce should be
segregated from residences and greens. A neighborhoods demand for goods
should be calculated scientifically, and this much and no more commercial
space allocated. The presense of many other people is, at best, a necessary
evil, and good city planning must aim for at least an illusion of isolation and
suburbany privacy. . planned community must be islanded off as a self-
contained unit, that it must resist future change, and that every significant
detail must be controlled by the planners from the start and then stuck to. In
short, good planning was projecting planning.

merely foreshadowing the more scathing critique of Modernist planning

that and this scathing style characterizes her critique of Modernist. Through

her work, Jane Jacobs excoriates

How the space how people act towards each other.

This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding.

With this, Jane Jacobs begins her long critique of modern urban planning.

Here was a curious thing. My friends instincts told him the North End was a
good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had
learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and good for city
neighborhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him the North End
had to be a bad place page 15

bankers, like planners, have theories about cities on which they act. They
have gotten their theories from the same intellectual sources as the
planners. Page 16

Bankers, like planners, have theories about cities on which they act.
Since theoretical city planning has embraced no major new ideas for
considerably more than a generation, theoretical planners, financers, and
bureuacrats are all just about even today page 16

false science bloodletting example

This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate

and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant
mutual support, both economically and socially. 19 JJS POINT OF
VIEW.

I think that unsuccessful city areas are areas which lack this kind of intricate
mutual support, and that the science of city planning and the art of city
desing, in real life for real cities, must become the science and art of
catalyzing and nourishing these close-grained working working relationships
19

Would be to decentralize great cities, thin them out, and disperse their
enterprises and populations into smaller, separated cities or, better yet,
towns. 27

The street is bad as an environment for humans houses should be turned

away from it and faced inward, towards sheltered greens. Frequent streets
are wasteful, of advantage only to real estate speculators who measure
value by the front foot. The basic unit of city design is not the street, but the
block and more particularly the super-block. Commerce should be
segregated from residences and greens. A neighborhoods demand for goods
should be calculated scientifically, and this much and no more commercial
space allocated. The presense of many other people is, at best, a necessary
evil, and good city planning must aim for at least an illusion of isolation and
suburbany privacy. . planned community must be islanded off as a self-
contained unit, that it must resist future change, and that every significant
detail must be controlled by the planners from the start and then stuck to. In
short, good planning was projecting planning.

That finally people who sincerely wanted to strengthen great cities should
adopt recipes frankly devised for undermining their economies and killing
them 28

The decentrists didnt like le corbs plan, which called for maximum
individual liberty, by which he seems to have meant not liberty to do
anything much, but liberty from ordinary responsibility.

Nobody was going to have to be his brothers keeper

Nobody was going to have to struggle with plans of his own.
Nobody was going to be tied down.
Page 30

and yet, ironically, the Radiant City comes directly out of the Garden City. Le
Corb accepted the Garden Citys fundamental image,.
hailed deliriously by architects. Has gradually been embodied in scores of
projects, ranging from low-income public housing to office building projects.
31

he included great arterial roads for express one-way traffic. He cut the
number of streets because cross roads are an enemy of traffic 31

TOTAL SEPERATION OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Garden City planners he kept the

pedestrians off the streets and in the parks.
it was so orderly, so visible, so easy to understand.. This vision and its
bold symbolism have been all but irresistible to planners, housers, designers,
and to developers, lenders, and mayors too.

who write rules calculated to encourage nonproject builders to reflect the

dream. 32

The Decentrists, with their devotion to the ideal of a cozy town life, have
never made peace with the le Corbusier vision, most of their disciplies have.
City desirners combine the two conceptiosnin various permutations. The
rebuilding technique variously known as selective removal or spot
renewal or renewal planning or planned conservation meaning that total
clearance of a run down area is avoided 32 really just trying to see how
many old buildings can be left while converting cities into a passable version
fo the garden city
Zoners, highway planners, lgislators, land use planners, and parks and
playground planners. 32.

From beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment
on urban-renewal law, the entire concoction is irrelevant to the workings of
cities. Unstudied, unrespected, cities have served as sacrificial victims. 34

Decentrists understand the city from the cozy small town perspective. Their
point of view seeks to totally undermine the city. The nervousness about the
new environment. Blah blah.

Slightly different, and make sure to make the distinction between garden city
and le corb, but that they both lead to the same thing. Or at least the
decentrists might be aghast by his ideas, but they accept the garden city
idea. Clarify that I think. And then say all the things that garden city tries to
do.
They inherently view cities as a bad thing.

SECOND QUESTIONS
She understands it from the people.
This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate
and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant
mutual support, both economically and socially 19

The need for primary uses, short blocks, aged buildings, and sufficient
concentration of people.

(combatting it by going against the force.)

Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old
buildings. -245

In the chapter titled The Need for Old Buildings Jane Jacobs argues that, apart from any
architectural considerations, every neighborhood needs a mixture of newer and older buildings in
order to allow for a variety of uses, income levels, and even ideas within the neighborhood

scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet page 66. Performative. Humans is

how she understand the city. Rituals between people. Says hellow to her
neighborhood. Nodding to neighbors. Smiling .

The strangers on Hudson Street, the allies whose eyes help us natives keep
the peace of the street, are so many that they always seem to be different
people from one day to the next 70.

we are not innately more competent at keeping the sidewalks safe than are
the people who try to live of fhte hostile truce of Turn in a blind-eyed city. We
are the lucky possessors of a city order that makes it relatively simple to
keep the peace because there are plenty of eyes on the street 71
(Reveals that she also accepts structural determinism)

its why children are safe here.

When discusses parks, she says they need eyes. Continuous use in order to
be safe.

JANE JACOBS DIVERSITY

analysis of cities, use by use has become a customary planning tactic. The
findings on various categories of use are then put together into broad,
overall picture. Useful as a blind men who felt an elephant and drew a
picture. 187

To understand cities, we have to deal outright with conbinations or mixtures

of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena 188.
^the above is a good framework for her. The others are very sepearted. She
is together.
I think by far the most important question about planning cities is this: How
can cities generate enough mixture among uses enough diversity
throughout enough of their territories, to sustain their own civilization? 188
Diversity not in people but in uses. And then discuss how that affects
everything she does. So from here I can discuss the sidewalks, the parks, the
four things she says that lead to diversity. She approaches cities as a way to
preserve mixed use.

Speaks to a literacy about urban control, or at least a literacy they believe.

They both believe in the power of planners to control cities.

She and her neighbors fought for decades to save their beloved Greenwich Village (the real one,
not the one that might be built in Fondren) from both piecemeal demolition and large-scale city
projects planned by Robert Moses

Perhaps most revealing for how Jacobs sought to intervene in cities ban be
based off of her own life. She always fought Robert moses. She and her
neighbors fought for decades to save their beloved Greenwich Village (the real one, not the one
that might be built in Fondren) from both piecemeal demolition and large-scale city projects
planned by Robert Mose

Jacobs, to me, is the essense of anti-Modernism, not in the sense of recoiling from the modern
world, but in her embrace of the human-scale everyday life around her and in her rejection of
industrial, large-scale solutions to urban problems.

structural determinism.

Present urban renewal laws are an attempt to break this cycle by wiping
away slums and their populations replacing them with projects intended to
produce higher tax yields. At best, It merely shifts slums from here to there,
adding to its own tincture of extra hardship and disruption. At worst, it
destroys neighborhoods where constructive and improving communities
exist 353
Paternalistic. 353
To overcome slums, we must regard slum dwellers as people capable of
understanding and acting upon their own self interests, which they certainly
are. We need to discern, respect and build upon the forces for regeneration
that exist in slums themselves, and that demonstrably work in real cities.

foundation for unslumming is a slum lively enough to be able to enjoy city

public life and sidewalk safety
in realms which planners and city designers can neer directly reach and
manipulate 0 nor should want to manipulate page 364.

When sufficient people begin to stay in a slum by choice, several important

things begin to happen. 368

The community itself gains competence and strength

Cities grow the middle class 369

Nothing in the training of planners, architects or government officials

contradicts these temptations to destroy unslumming slums 375

^I definitely have enough to bang something out. After the VUE thing I
should sit down and write until 8:30 and be done with this one. Then take a
break until 9, start the next one, compile my quotes, and then take a break.
And then write. And then hopefully be in bed by 1.

the planning derived from these semifeudal objectives has never been
reassessed. It has been employed to deal with real, twentieth century cities.
And this is one reason why, When Americancity slums do unslum, they do so
in spite of planning, and counter to the ideals of city planning.

Conceptually speaking, what is a ghetto? How does political

economy understand its essence differently than the Chicago School
did? Whose concept the Chicago School or political economys
better explains Latin Americans enclaves of urban poverty?

Socio-cultural factors instead of institutional. Social phenomenon versus

political.

Paragraph about what the ghetto is.

When I discuss the differences in ghetto perceptions, perhaps quote the

reading about how ghetto is a diffuse term. Diffuse idea. Started from being
strictly a jewish space and enclave
Political economy versus the Chicago school.

Transition about how political economy definition of ghetto is very small, but
political economy can still be used to understand enclaves of urban poverty.
For what exists within Latin America

Chicago School on Ghettos:

Mention Louis Wirth the ghetto, which really chalks a lot of this stuff up to the
people.

IN his classic book The Ghetto, Louis Wirth assimilates to the Jewish ghetto
of medieval Europe the Little Sicilies, Little Polands, Chinatowns and Blacks
Belts in our large cities, along with the vice areas hosting deviant types
such as hobos bohemians and prostitutes. All of them are said to be natural
areas born of the universal desire of different group sto preserve their
peculiar cultural forms, and each fulfills a specialized function in the
broader urban organism. This is what one may call Wirths error: confounding
the mechanisms of socio-spatial seclusion visited upon African Americans
upon European immigrants by conflating two urban forms with antinomic
architectures and eff
4 la quant

Chicago school foreign families fail to conform and control their families.

Chicago school 153 Over a large area of the slum, the area of cheap
lodging houses, there is nothing of the nature of a community. And the
persons and families who live in these lodging houses are segregated there
because they have failed, for one reason or another, to adjust elsewhere.
Many of these families are broken families; others are disorganized; still
others are merely ineffective. Moreover, the very physical conditions of
lodging house life, particularly its mobility, make impossible that
constellation of attitudes about a home, with its significant ritual, which
afford the basis for that emotional interdependence which is the
sociologically significant fact of family life. As a result, the person who dwells
in the lodging house of the slum has to meet his problems alone. This is
peculiarly significant in the behavior patterns of the child.