**"The Death and Life of Great American Cities"** written by **Jane Jacobs** was a highly influential work. Did the movement it inspired have a name, and what happened to that momentum? I know that part of the momentums on off into the historical preservation movement.
Based on my comment below, you can guess the problem I have with "cities" and "great cities."
I don't see much talk about JJ these days, so it's hard to say why Death and Life has fallen out of favor. As critical I am of the book, it is still very relevant and many problems she raises merit responses.
The most interesting claims she makes in Death and Life concern urban socialization. While I am disappointed that this does not attract discussion, younger generations of Americans would not receive these ideas well.
Jacobs stresses the on the street quality of urban life. I think technology has done this in, what with air conditioning and infinite entertainment available indoors on our devices.
Yes. But when I see many urbanists comment about Jacobs on urban socialization, they are expecting to meet their BFF in the street or in a third place, but I don't recall Jacobs ever making this claim. Instead, she stresses persistent, low-impact, superficial, random contact. Furthermore, she contrasts that with suburban-style socialization, with she calls "Togetherness," which includes more socially intimate gatherings convened in living rooms and backyards, mostly outside the public eye.
I'm just saying that there are fewer people hanging out on the urban street who have eyeballs on that street for hours at a time. The street used to be cooler than the airless tenement apt. Now the air conditioned tenement apt is cooler than the street. I briefly lived in a tenement apartment in New York that was so hot in the summer that candles melted.
The Benfield article speaks to a lot of my concerns with how progressives approach social policy. You hear a lot of "80% of people say they want [X progressive policy], but they don't vote for it." I think it's because so often the pitch is hidden under layers and layers of jargon. My town's business development organization did it a really smart way. They know people here want more urbanism, but they sent around a survey that kept it very simple: "What kind of new restaurant would you most like to see open here?" "What kind of new retail store would you most like to see open here?" "What kind of food or grocery store would you most like to see open here?" Get that info, attract someone who will build it, and the people will come.
That last bit is really good. Some folks in my hometown get frustrated that people sort of say "we want to be like [successful town] oh but we don't want any crowds or more people or more development." I get that but genuinely asking people what they *do* want and actually being able to deliver it in some reasonable time scale would feel much better to a lot of people even if the end result is the same.
Sometimes, though, pushing back can work. I read a wonderful anecdote about a previous mayor of Frederick, MD, who was accosted at a public meeting about all the new people and development. He asked one of the people how long he'd lived in Frederick and he said five years. Ok, said the mayor, I'll declare a moratorium on new residents. But I'll do you one better and make it retroactive for five years. Whoever recounted the story (it was in a book I think) identified that as a moment that the mayor's view on balancing growth and preservation broke through.
The answers were an interesting mix for a well-off, mixed demographic town. In order, people wanted a family restaurant, a bookstore, and an indoor farmers market. I think movie theater was highly ranked as well. All good choices in my book and the kind of things that would go far toward making our already pretty village-like downtown a real place for everyone to get together and run into each other like a town should be.
"Making everyday living easier through proximity is what urbanism is about" (Erin's comment) sums it up nicely. I highly regard the skill of picturing something simply, cleanly, precisely. Maybe if urbanists gave us more pictures to study, we would all adjust our views.
Thanks for sharing this essay by Kaid Benfield. The great intellectual misstep for urbanists was imagining urbanism generally as a scale-dependent problem to be defined in a scale-dependent way. North American sociologists and historians certainly construct it as a scale-dependent subject at the first order. The New Urban History, which flourished in the 70s and 80s, was preoccupied with the process of urbanization, and neglected "urban" as a quality and neglected the study of place.
Where I disagree with Benfield is that this is principally a public outreach issue. I think the problematic language reveals flawed theory, and we can sell a theory better once we make it coherent. Urbanist theory is not coherent. Let's make it so.
It's appropriate to question the English language, as Benfield is doing. But I raise another question about language and give a different answer. We make a hash of the subject by attempting to reduce "urban" and "city" to a clean synonymy. They are not even the same parts of speech! "Urban" is an adjective without a corresponding noun with the same root and "city" is a noun without an appropriate adjective with the same root. In my smart-alecky moments, I say "civilized is behaving appropriately in a civitas," but this does not cut it as sound theory. In English, "city" is firmly entrenched as a settlement of the highest population scale, so this is the least changeable in urbanist-related terms. The problem is equating "urban" with "city" or even with "places with the qualities of cities," because so many cities (like Houston) are not qualitatively urban.
The other problem with "urban=city" is what Gilbert Ryle called "category mistake." (Ex: "Austin and Texas are the same thing," or "Albuquerque and Texas are the same thing.") "Urban" is a higher level of abstraction than "city."
I define "urban" as "living bound to neighborhoods." I propose "urb" as new genus word that includes any settlement that has urban qualities, without regard to scale. Houston is not urban and this is difficult to express in other terms. "Houston is not a city" is an intuitive expression to many urbanists, but this statement fails to acknowledge what a city is: it's simply a settlement at the highest scale of population. Cities are qualitatively unique types of settlements, but they are neither uniquely urban nor even characteristically urban.
Yeah, I think this semantics stuff is really important. I definitely use "urban" and "city" fairly interchangeably, but only because I define "city" as "any urban place." But as you note, most people don't see it that way, and maybe redefining a word isn't the way to argue the underlying point.
Your move is a valid one. It's sensible to say the it's civilized to live in settlements. The preference for large settlements is driven by the advantages of economies of scale. Great cities make monumental development possible and attract high-level institutions. It takes a great city to build the Lincoln Center and maintain a professional opera company. Thus, scale does matter for some things. Even Richard Florida has largely retracted his Creative Class thesis, however, and proposes that urbanists show more concern for everyday living. IMO, making everyday living easier through proximity is what urbanism is about.
>You might say that the increasingly common tent encampments in our major cities are our housing black markets.
I love this take.
I don’t necessarily think there’s a correlation between drug use and homelessness on a city-compared basis, but of course within any given city a hugely disproportionate number of the unsheltered homeless will be mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or both. And there will be fewer homeless per capita the more abundant and cheap housing is. I think some talking points can be technically true yet misleading in the extreme. “Fixing” homelessness requires not just building affordable housing but also increasing mental institution and rehab beds or using prisons as a backstop.
Also, I define urbanism as Tokyo-style transit in all towns and cities, and I’ll vote for whoever makes it a reality.
**"The Death and Life of Great American Cities"** written by **Jane Jacobs** was a highly influential work. Did the movement it inspired have a name, and what happened to that momentum? I know that part of the momentums on off into the historical preservation movement.
Based on my comment below, you can guess the problem I have with "cities" and "great cities."
I don't see much talk about JJ these days, so it's hard to say why Death and Life has fallen out of favor. As critical I am of the book, it is still very relevant and many problems she raises merit responses.
The most interesting claims she makes in Death and Life concern urban socialization. While I am disappointed that this does not attract discussion, younger generations of Americans would not receive these ideas well.
Jacobs stresses the on the street quality of urban life. I think technology has done this in, what with air conditioning and infinite entertainment available indoors on our devices.
Yes. But when I see many urbanists comment about Jacobs on urban socialization, they are expecting to meet their BFF in the street or in a third place, but I don't recall Jacobs ever making this claim. Instead, she stresses persistent, low-impact, superficial, random contact. Furthermore, she contrasts that with suburban-style socialization, with she calls "Togetherness," which includes more socially intimate gatherings convened in living rooms and backyards, mostly outside the public eye.
I'm just saying that there are fewer people hanging out on the urban street who have eyeballs on that street for hours at a time. The street used to be cooler than the airless tenement apt. Now the air conditioned tenement apt is cooler than the street. I briefly lived in a tenement apartment in New York that was so hot in the summer that candles melted.
I think I’d prefer living in a tent to such an apartment!
Some people used to sleep on fire escapes, but not in my neighborhood.
The Benfield article speaks to a lot of my concerns with how progressives approach social policy. You hear a lot of "80% of people say they want [X progressive policy], but they don't vote for it." I think it's because so often the pitch is hidden under layers and layers of jargon. My town's business development organization did it a really smart way. They know people here want more urbanism, but they sent around a survey that kept it very simple: "What kind of new restaurant would you most like to see open here?" "What kind of new retail store would you most like to see open here?" "What kind of food or grocery store would you most like to see open here?" Get that info, attract someone who will build it, and the people will come.
That last bit is really good. Some folks in my hometown get frustrated that people sort of say "we want to be like [successful town] oh but we don't want any crowds or more people or more development." I get that but genuinely asking people what they *do* want and actually being able to deliver it in some reasonable time scale would feel much better to a lot of people even if the end result is the same.
Sometimes, though, pushing back can work. I read a wonderful anecdote about a previous mayor of Frederick, MD, who was accosted at a public meeting about all the new people and development. He asked one of the people how long he'd lived in Frederick and he said five years. Ok, said the mayor, I'll declare a moratorium on new residents. But I'll do you one better and make it retroactive for five years. Whoever recounted the story (it was in a book I think) identified that as a moment that the mayor's view on balancing growth and preservation broke through.
The answers were an interesting mix for a well-off, mixed demographic town. In order, people wanted a family restaurant, a bookstore, and an indoor farmers market. I think movie theater was highly ranked as well. All good choices in my book and the kind of things that would go far toward making our already pretty village-like downtown a real place for everyone to get together and run into each other like a town should be.
"Making everyday living easier through proximity is what urbanism is about" (Erin's comment) sums it up nicely. I highly regard the skill of picturing something simply, cleanly, precisely. Maybe if urbanists gave us more pictures to study, we would all adjust our views.
Thanks for sharing this essay by Kaid Benfield. The great intellectual misstep for urbanists was imagining urbanism generally as a scale-dependent problem to be defined in a scale-dependent way. North American sociologists and historians certainly construct it as a scale-dependent subject at the first order. The New Urban History, which flourished in the 70s and 80s, was preoccupied with the process of urbanization, and neglected "urban" as a quality and neglected the study of place.
Where I disagree with Benfield is that this is principally a public outreach issue. I think the problematic language reveals flawed theory, and we can sell a theory better once we make it coherent. Urbanist theory is not coherent. Let's make it so.
It's appropriate to question the English language, as Benfield is doing. But I raise another question about language and give a different answer. We make a hash of the subject by attempting to reduce "urban" and "city" to a clean synonymy. They are not even the same parts of speech! "Urban" is an adjective without a corresponding noun with the same root and "city" is a noun without an appropriate adjective with the same root. In my smart-alecky moments, I say "civilized is behaving appropriately in a civitas," but this does not cut it as sound theory. In English, "city" is firmly entrenched as a settlement of the highest population scale, so this is the least changeable in urbanist-related terms. The problem is equating "urban" with "city" or even with "places with the qualities of cities," because so many cities (like Houston) are not qualitatively urban.
The other problem with "urban=city" is what Gilbert Ryle called "category mistake." (Ex: "Austin and Texas are the same thing," or "Albuquerque and Texas are the same thing.") "Urban" is a higher level of abstraction than "city."
I define "urban" as "living bound to neighborhoods." I propose "urb" as new genus word that includes any settlement that has urban qualities, without regard to scale. Houston is not urban and this is difficult to express in other terms. "Houston is not a city" is an intuitive expression to many urbanists, but this statement fails to acknowledge what a city is: it's simply a settlement at the highest scale of population. Cities are qualitatively unique types of settlements, but they are neither uniquely urban nor even characteristically urban.
Yeah, I think this semantics stuff is really important. I definitely use "urban" and "city" fairly interchangeably, but only because I define "city" as "any urban place." But as you note, most people don't see it that way, and maybe redefining a word isn't the way to argue the underlying point.
Your move is a valid one. It's sensible to say the it's civilized to live in settlements. The preference for large settlements is driven by the advantages of economies of scale. Great cities make monumental development possible and attract high-level institutions. It takes a great city to build the Lincoln Center and maintain a professional opera company. Thus, scale does matter for some things. Even Richard Florida has largely retracted his Creative Class thesis, however, and proposes that urbanists show more concern for everyday living. IMO, making everyday living easier through proximity is what urbanism is about.
>You might say that the increasingly common tent encampments in our major cities are our housing black markets.
I love this take.
I don’t necessarily think there’s a correlation between drug use and homelessness on a city-compared basis, but of course within any given city a hugely disproportionate number of the unsheltered homeless will be mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or both. And there will be fewer homeless per capita the more abundant and cheap housing is. I think some talking points can be technically true yet misleading in the extreme. “Fixing” homelessness requires not just building affordable housing but also increasing mental institution and rehab beds or using prisons as a backstop.
Also, I define urbanism as Tokyo-style transit in all towns and cities, and I’ll vote for whoever makes it a reality.