When writing about Jane Jacobs, it can be tempting to focus solely on her ideas, especially her criticisms of the received wisdom about urban planning of the 1940s and 1950s. Jacobs was the first to draw attention to the nakedness of urban-renewal emperors like New York’s Robert Moses, Philadelphia’s Edwin Bacon, and Boston’s Edward Logue. We still live with the bitter fruits of their work.
So-called urban renewal had the opposite effect on cities. Across the country, cityscapes remain littered with midcentury public-housing projects that are isolated, crime-ridden, and devoid of the street life and small stores that, as Jacobs was the first to understand, help keep cities safe and economically dynamic. We also still live with the massive anti-urban installations called “super blocks” that, like New York’s Lincoln Center, become frozen landscapes within the city, prevented from being used for new purposes and new visions. Who can doubt that the brownstones, row houses, and walk-up apartments that Jacobs defended against the planners’ wrecking balls would be more valuable today than their lifeless replacements? Property values in Brooklyn—as in Boston’s North and South Ends, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, and San Francisco’s Tenderloin—make the case that they would.
Read Full Article »