Are Jane Jacobs supporters missing her points?

[miketoronto]

My friend has been rereading Death and Life of Great American Cities, for a school project, and he is noticing a tone that the hardcore Jacobs followers and many planners who are pushing certain ideas in the name of Jacobs, are actually not following what she said.

Some quotes he brings attention to are:


The following quotes are interesting concerning the ideas of modern planners and many transit advocates to want to have neighbourhoods where people almost never leave to visit other parts of the city.


"We must first of all drop any ideal of neighbourhoods as self-contained or introverted units. Unfortunately orthodox planning theory is deeply committed to the ideal of supposedly cozy, inward-turned city neighbourhoods."


"City people are not stuck with the provincialism of a neighbourhood, and why should they be? Isn't wide choice and rich opportunity the point of cities? This is indeed the point of cities. Furthermore, this very fluidity of use and choice among city people is precisely the foundation underlying most city cultural activities and special enterprises of all kinds. Because these can draw skills, materials, customers or clienteles from a great pool, they can exist in extraordinary variety, and not only downtown but in other city districts that develop specialties and characters of their own. And in drawing upon the great pool of the city in this way, city enterprises increase, in turn, the choices available to city people for jobs, goods, entertainment, ideas, contacts, services."

"The lack of either economic or social self-containment is natural and necessary to city neighbourhoods-simply because they are parts of cities. Isaacs is right when he implies that the conception of neighbourhood in cities is meaningless--so long as we think of neighbourhoods as being self-contained units to any significant degree, modeled upon town neighbourhoods."


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Aside from these my friend has also brought up sections of her book where she states downtown residential is not the be all and end all to reviving a downtown, and that places like downtown New York need destinations to draw people in, not residents who themselves can not support a downtown district.

She also attacks cities without clear centers and calls the alternative erosion into homogeneous sprawl.

This is interesting concerning the pro decentralization planners have been trying to force on cities in the name of keeping people in their own little neighbourhoods.

Anyway some things to think about, and he wanted me to post this to see what kind of discussion can be had concerning this.

[mhays]

She's not jebus. The right answer isn't necessarily Jane's answer.

Neighborhoods can be self-supporting, with a wide array of services so you could choose to never/rarely leave, while still being integrated into the city's economy and array of choices.

Downtown housing obviously isn't enough to support a great retail center by itself, or the symphony, or the city's main nightlife district. But it's still a major dimension in a successful downtown.

Lacking a center isn't always a problem. Paris, London, and Tokyo don't have defined centers. Rather they have large cores that go on for miles, and particularly in London's case aren't all that dense.

[yaletown_fella]

I like how the peaceful New York and Toronto's financial districts are at night relative to their other central nabes. Provides a haven for skyscraper enthusiasts to escape to

Gotta love walking through the Miesian and FCP section of the PATH system at 11 pm.