Transcript Reading Questions:

Reading Questions:
Jane Jacobs, Life and Death of
Great American Cities
Introduction (pp. 3-25)
1. At what group of professionals is Jane Jacobs
taking aim in this book? (p. 3)

Jacobs is at war with professional urban planners, especially
those involved with urban renewal projects that involve tearing
down large sections of established cities and replacing them
with public housing projects, high rises, and other forms of
modern development. She was also opposed to free ways that
cut through traditional neighborhoods, affected pedestrian
patterns, and required destruction of buildings and dislocation of
people. She names almost none of her adversaries by name.
Some of the contemporaries whose ideas or policies she is
opposing include Lewis Mumford, an urban reformer and
intellectual. Another is Robert Moses, the planner responsible
for the modernization of New York . Architect Le Corbusier was
still alive when Death and Life appeared.
Links:
On Le Corbusier
 On Robert Moses
 On Lewis Mumford

2. What do “towns, suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs, and
imaginary dream cities” have in common, and how are they
different from “great cities”? (pp. 6-7)


What’s a sanitorium?
These are all utopian communities, forms of “unurban
urbanization,” which try to master the complexity and diversity of
cities by sorting out their functions and populations into tidy
zones and neighborhoods.
3. What is the “one principle” that emerges from Jacobs’
“adventuring in the real world” of American cities? (pp. 1314)

A recurrent theme of the book – and now a commonplace of
contemporary urban theory – is the importance of many forms of
diversity in successful cities. This includes economic diversity
among inhabitants; different heights, sizes, and ages among
buildings; and the concentration of different types of activity
within a small area (housing, shops, light industry, recreation,
culture). Although race is not an active category in the book (a
topic for possible discussion), she certainly means something
like ethnic and racial diversity as well, and occasionally refers to
it.
4. Why don’t the inhabitants of the East Harlem housing
project like their lawn? (p. 15) What, according to Jacobs, is
the “pretended order” and what is the “real order” in this
episode?

The lawn was put in without tenant input. Although
there is plenty of grass in this and other public
housing projects, there are few “third places” where
one can buy coffee or get a newspaper.
5. Distinguish the following types of
modern city:
The “Garden City”
 The Towns of the Decentrists
 The “Radiant City”
 The “City Beautiful”

The Garden City (pp. 17-19)

The Garden City was the brainchild of Ebenezer
Howard, an English reformer who also spent time in
America and knew Emerson and Whitman. Horrified
by the living conditions in London and other large
cities, he wanted to design better, more suburban
living arrangements for the poor. These planned
communities would located be outside the city,
surrounded by agricultural green belts, and financed
and run by the people living in them. Not so bad, in
theory at least …
The Towns of the Decentrists

(pp. 19-20)
The Decentrists were the American adapters of the ideas of
Ebenezer Howard and Sir Patrick Geddes. They included Lewis
Mumford (who gave Jacobs’ book a negative review when it
appeared, after writing her a positive recommendation for the
Rockefeller Foundation Grant that allowed her to compose it).
Mumford was architecture critic for The New Yorker and author
of The City in History, which received the National Book Award
in 1961, the same year that Death and Life appeared. The
Decentrists applied the Garden City idea to regional planning,
with the idea of “decentralizing” cities by spreading their
functions and populations out over a large area. Their ideas had
more impact on suburban development than on regional
planning per se.
The Radiant City (pp. 21-23)

The Radiant City is associated with the Swiss-born architect Le
Corbusier. Like Mies Van der Rohe, whom Bob Moeller
introduced in connection with the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier
(sometimes referred to as “Corbu”) was a modernist architect
who believed that modern design could lead to cleaner, more
rational living for workers and other urban inhabitants, largely in
the form of high-rise housing. Jacobs describes the Radiant City
as a vertical version of the Garden City, a stacking of housing
units on top of each other, surrounded by parkland and
accessed by highways. High density in the vertical dimension
allowed for plenty of open space below. Many upper- and
middle-income housing projects are designed on the Radiant
City model – as are low-income “projects.” Unlike the Garden
City and the regionalism of the Decentrists, the Radiant City is a
form of development really designed for use inside cities – and it
has had a major impact on the skylines and housing patterns of
Chicago, New York, and other “great” and not-so-great American
(and global) cities.
The City Beautiful (pp. 24-25)

The City Beautiful is the World’s Fair approach to
urban planning. It eschews the clean modern lines of
Corbu in favor of decorative, thematic architecture.
Think Disneyland and the kinds of developments
inspired by it, as well as downtowns focused on
large, embarked, cultural destinations (the Mall in
Washington, Balboa Park in San Diego, Museum Mile
or the Getty in LA, the Great Park in Irvine) rather
than high-density shopping, walking, and gazing.
5b. The end results of these different cities may look
very different. According to JJ, what do they all have
in common?

Each of these models is at war with the mixed use,
high density, pedestrian landscape of cities that have
not undergone modern planning and rebuilding
processes. Each assumes that lots of open space
and parkland will make for healthier, happier living
environments, whether inside cities or in the areas
around them. Each tends to segregate residential
areas from commercial and industrial functions.
There is also a tendency to separate out economic
classes from each other as well, for example, by
restricting public transportation into wealthy areas or
by promoting cul de sacs..
Chapter Two: the uses of sidewalks:
safety (pp. 29-54)
6. According to JJ, what is the essential difference
between a city and a town? (p. 30)

Cities are full of strangers, and have
developed means for strangers to live
together.
7. Why does life in housing projects (both low and
middle-income) resemble the story of the three little
pigs? (p. 31)

According to Jacobs, large housing projects, turned away from
the street and in towards courtyards as well as up into the sky,
have given up the life of the street and the sidewalk that allows
strangers to interact and neighbors to supervise the
neighborhood. Their corridors and courtyards are not visible.
There is very little commerce to encourage a steady flow of
pedestrians whose presence would deter crime and encourage
active looking by neighbors and passers-by. There are no
passers-by because there is nothing to do in these residential
tracts. Thus, if a stranger comes to the door, he just might be the
big bad wolf.
8. What does JJ mean by “the Great Blight of
Dullness”? (p. 34, pp. 40-42)

JJ uses this phrase to describe large residential
areas that lack commerce and pedestrian traffic.
These places are boring to walk around in, so nobody
does. And because they are often deserted, they tend
not to be safe. Yet they appear to have the physical
attributes of “good neighborhoods” – largely
residential, lots of trees and grass, not densely
populated. Many of these areas were built recently,
as attractive suburbs for people leaving the city
centers, and then decline quickly.
9. According to JJ, what are the three characteristics
of a safe street? (p. 35)



On a safe street, you know what’s public and what’s
private.
On a safe street, “there are eyes on the street” –
people walking around, proprietors of businesses
checking out the action, neighbors looking out their
windows.
On a safe street, sidewalks are in almost continuous
use, thanks to a mix of businesses that open at
different times of day and serve the needs and wants
of different kinds of people, some from within the
neighborhood, some from outside.
10. How does JJ use the narrative about the man
struggling with the little girl to demonstrate her point
about safety and sidewalks? (pp. 38-9)

This is a nice example of JJ’s skills as a writer. She
builds up some drama – we think the man is going to
abduct the little girl. The neighbors gather, but don’t
quite intervene. Tension mounts. It turns out that the
man is the girl’s father (and not a father under a
restraining order, we presume). Although the story is
deliberately anticlimactic, it illustrates not only the
vigilance of the people on the street, but also the
relative safety of the street itself.
11. How is Los Angeles like a wild animal
park in Africa? (p. 46)

People observe the life of the city from
the safety of their cars.
12. Explain Jacobs’ axiom, “Wherever the rebuilt city rises
the barbaric concept of Turf must follow.” (p. 50)

Turf is a principle that develops in gang warfare. JJ analyses a situation
in 1956 in which the New York City Youth Board brought provisional
security to an area torn by gang violence by capitulating to the turf
principle. The police used their force and authority to support rather
than challenge the rule of the gangs. The real irony, however, is that
official institutions, such as hospitals, upper income housing towers,
and universities also assert the principle of Turf when they gate and
fortress their campuses.
 Gated communities as we know them hadn’t been invented yet, but we
see their origins in these high rises for wealthy Manhattanites:, highsecurity affairs with fences, doormen, and (perhaps) underground
parking. It is interesting to note that gating begins in the cities, as a way
of creating a kind of pastoral suburb within the city. As urban patterns
have deteriorated and the “great blight of dullness” has seeped into
posturban America, gating has now become a feature of suburban life
as well. The irony for JJ is that gated communities make cities less safe
rather than more safe, by destroying the fabric of trust and the life of
sidewalks that deters crime from the ground up.
13. How does JJ use the image of the “intricate
sidewalk ballet” to organize her account of a typical
day on Hudson Street in New York City? (50-54)

This is the most famous passage in the
book. JJ uses the metaphor of the ballet
to choreograph the different traffic
patterns and interactions that vitalize
Hudson Street in 1960.
Chapter Five: the uses of
neighborhood parks (pp. 89-111)
14. What conventional idea about parks does JJ want
to “turn around” in this chapter? (p. 89)

One of the truisms of orthodox planning that JJ takes on in this
book is the idea that parks and open space are in and of
themselves healthy, positive additions to urban and suburban
life – genuine and inarguable improvements over the asphalt
and concrete of urban streets and sidewalks. She “turns this
idea around” by suggesting that it is cities (their activity, their
density, the interest that they bring in the form of foot traffic, the
enclosure they provide by way of buildings and streets) that
make parks successful. The lack of sufficient city life renders
parks both dull and dangerous. It is not quite fair to say that
“Jane Jacobs loves sidewalks and hates parks,” but it’s a good
place to start, since one can read her project as an attempt to
restore dignity to streets and sidewalks by understanding the
kinds of activity they support, while reevaluating the salutary role
of parks and open space – especially their dependence on
streets and sidewalks if they are to succeed in pulling
neighborhoods together.
15. Explain JJ’s statement, “Parks are not
automatically anything.” (p. 92)

This claim is key to JJ’s new approach to urban planning, which
looks at systems and patterns of use, rather than at the absolute
value or meaning of any one item in the urban landscape. To
paraphrase Hamlet, “There is no good or bad, but living makes it
so.” JJ is interested in discovering the “reality” of parks (how
they are really used, why so many fail, how we might make
them better) rather than the “myth” of parks (that they are in and
of themselves a boon to the neighborhoods where they are
placed). This concern with parks runs through the entire book,
beginning with her analyses of the Garden City, the Radiant City,
and the City Beautiful, and ending with her critique of Nature in
the final chapter. Alll of these moments take a certain pastoral
myth of the park as their founding image for the rebuilt modern
city. One might argue, however, that JJ substitutes a certain
urban pastoral for the rural pastoral of the planners.
16. What exactly is “blight” anyway? (p. 97)

”Blight” is a term taken from biology and horticulture, where it
refers to the symptom of chlorosis (browning) in plants as a
response to infection. In urban theory, blight refers to the
process by which a neighborhood loses its vitality and appeal,
exhibiting such symptoms as depopulation, vacant buildings,
crime, and empty, inhospitable urban vistas. (Fans of The Wire
may recall the “the vacants”—abandoned stretches of row
houses in inner city Baltimore. This setting could be contrasted
with the “low rises” and “The Towers,” two forms of public
housing where much of the drug trade occurs in the series. The
first is an example of blight, the second of failed urban renewal.)
Blight…

In American cities, blight tends to afflict urban centers
first, and then spreads to the rings of suburbs that
first sucked population out of the center. In cities in
other parts of the world, blight tends to be associated
with the great slums that form around them, leaving
the city centers relatively vital and prosperous.
Blight…

A review of the word blight in the OED reveals that the plant
meaning stems from the 17th century. The first use in relation to
urban contexts is attributed to none other than Lewis Mumford.
Part of the import of JJ’s use of the word “blight” may be to
assign it to regions other than unreformed urban centers, to
show how blight can characterize suburban developments and
new urban projects. In other words, the war against blight – as
waged by Moses, Mumford, and others – itself causes new
forms of blight, both inside urban neighborhoods that have been
bulldozed and rebuilt, and in the suburbs designed to produce
alternatives to “blighted” urban living. To call “dullness” “blight” is
to take the solution to urban blight (redevelopment and
suburbanization) and diagnose it as itself a form and cause of
blight.
Blight in the OED (selected):

PLANT LIFE
– 1. gen. Any baleful influence of atmospheric or
invisible origin, that suddenly blasts, nips, or
destroys plants, affects them with disease, arrests
their growth, or prevents their blossom from
‘setting’; a diseased state of plants of unknown or
assumed atmospheric origin.
– 1669 WORLIDGE Syst. Agric. viii. §3 (1681) 159
Spoiled by the various mutations of the Air, or by
Blights, Mildews, etc.
Blight in the OED (selected):

URBAN LIFE
– b. spec. An unsightly urban area (cf. BLIGHTED
ppl. a. 1b).
– 1938 L. MUMFORD Culture of Cities 8 We..face
the accumulated physical and social results of that
disruption: ravaged landscapes, disorderly urban
districts,..patches of blight, mile upon mile of
standardized slums. 1952 M. LOCK et al. Bedford
by River i. 23/1 Blight clearance will affect another
4,100 people who will be displaced from the main
clearance areas.
17. What does JJ mean when she says that you can “neither
lie to a neighborhood park, nor reason with it”? What would
be an example of lying to a park? What would be an example
of reasoning with a park? (p. 101)

JJ wants to replace myths about parks (as promoted by
planners) with the reality of parks as observed by people
actually using them: the difficulty of creating and maintaining
successful ones, and their absolute dependence on the vitality
and diversity of their urban surroundings. “Lying to a park” might
include brochures and artistic renderings that advertise the
virtues of a new housing development through images of
parkland. “Reasoning with a park” might include adding
“improvements” that are supposed to make the park nicer (new
benches, a play structure, a fountain, or -- egads -- more
grass!!), but which don’t really address the fabric of the
surrounding neighborhood and the resulting traffic patterns. For
an example of “reasoning with a park,” see the discussion of the
empty fountain in the middle of Washington Square, and the
plan to fill it in with grass, “’restoring the land to park use.’” (p.
105)
18. What is JJ’s attitude towards Skid Row
parks (pp. 99-100)?

Such parks were typically seen as examples of “urban blight” by
urban planners. JJ certainly does not see Skid Row parks as
urban amenities, but she does see them as serving important
functions for the homeless (not a term in use when she wrote
the book), and she takes seriously the forms of social life that
she observes in them. She also distinguishes Skid Row parks
(parks for the homeless) from crime parks. Fans of The Wire
might want to consider the attractive character of Bubbles, a
largely homeless junkie who supports himself through minor
theft and recyling, and spends much of his days in and around
city parks, and the drug dealers, who push their products in the
courtyard of the Low Rises (public housing development), and
who make business plans in a deserted concrete park.
19a. What according to JJ are the four features of
good park design? (pp. 103-106)

Intricacy: a variety of paths and
vistas, perhaps exhibited in grading of
the site, that lend variety to the
pedestrian experience of the park. It
need not be intricate as viewed from
above; intricacy is a ground-level
phenomenon.
Cont’d…

Centering:
– successful parks usually have a center or
focal point, like the empty fountain shell in
Washington Square.
Cont’d…

Sun:
– sun encourages picnicking and hanging
out; when sun is blocked by tall buildings
(think Corbu), parks can be adversely
affected.
Cont’d…

Enclosure:
– a park needs a set of boundaries. Streets, sidewalks, and
buildings afford visible limits to parks, which shouldn’t be too
big if they are to succeed as true neighborhood parks (rather
than destination parks like zoos, sports parks, or museum
complexes). What JJ calls with her characteristic irony “land
oozes” – indeterminate chunks of grassland spread out
around high rises and housing projects – lack this bounded
character, and are thus avoided by picnickers, strollers, and
other potential park visitors, who will, she says, actually
cross the street rather than walk through their creepy green .
19b. Is good design enough to make a park
successful? (p. 103-106)

These four features of good park design are necessary but not
sufficient causes for park success. Design alone is not enough:
this is one message of JJ’s book. A park is not a thing; it is part
of an urban ecology. These four features can encourage its
integration into city life, but they by no means guarantee it. Put
in terms of this course, we might say that Jane Jacobs is
mapping the limits of human making, as expressed in modern
planning and technology. You cannot make a great city; a great
city is something that develops over time, out of the selforganizing actions (doings) of human beings. Thinking and
making can be brought to bear on cities, but they cannot replace
these self-organizing processes.
Chapter Twenty-Two: the kind of
problem a city is
20a. What, according to JJ, are the three kinds of
problems identified by the history of modern
science? (pp. 429-32)

Simple Problems:
– problems with two variables, as
approached by the early physical sciences.
Cont’d…

Disorganized Complexity:
– problems with many, many variables,
solved through statistical analysis.
Important to modern physics, actuarial
analysis, economics, communication and
information theory.
Cont’d…

Organized Complexity:
– developed by the life sciences, especially biology
and medicine, to address problems with many
variables, which are interrelated. The biological
organism is an obvious example. so is the
environment, conceived as an ecological system.
You might recall some of Martin’s descriptions of
aetia / causes in Aristotle, and his discussion of
ecology as a modern science that develops the
integrated approach to causality first approached
by Aristotle.
20b. What kind of problem is a city? (p. 433-34)

Jane Jacobs see the city as an example of
organized complexity, since the many
features and factors (“variables”) of urban life,
such as employment opportunities,
population density, the size of city blocks, the
number and types of businesses, and the
height and age of buildings all act on each
other. The word “life” in the title of the book
certainly evokes the organic / biological
model of organized complexity that Jacobs
develops implicitly and explicitly throughout
the book.
FIN