There were a lot of ideas I found interesting in Citizen Jane Battle for the City and in the except from Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. A lot of my reactions were influenced by my experiences growing up in Freetown Sierra Leone. Frankly, I think Jane Jacobs would have felt at home in most African cities. The ”meandering” and complex pedestrian paths of Freetown fit into Jane Jacob’s conception of an ideal city. However, if you ask most people who actually live in Freetown, they would express sincere disgust for these, honestly, confusing navigation systems. You see, the tight, irregular, and congested infrastructure of most developing countries is a result of administrative ineptitude. City planning pretty much stopped more than 50 years ago. That compounded with corrupt governments led to what we have. These seemingly ”organic” results are not ”organic” in a good way. There is a long history of romanticizing poverty, and its by-products (such as slums and old dilapidated buildings). In most ways, certain aspects of the local culture are reflected in these organized/disorganized urban societies. But these are adaptations to impoverished living conditions. Some people believe, ”well they might not have much, but they are happy”. Frankly, I think that’s very wrong. For one, people should always be given a chance to improve their lives. These streets full of people are actually sometimes reflective of extremely high unemployment rates. I think urban renewal does hold possibilities for ameliorating these conditions. The problem with urban renewal I guess is the dislocation of the original inhabitants which does not have to happen. Again, I think some of the reasons most of these housing projects such as Pruitt-Igoe failed had largely to do with race and much more serious class issues in American society and not necessarily with the architectural ideas themselves.
Additionally, I see Jane Jacob’s desire to preserve these neighborhoods as sort of analogous to the stubborn desire of some societies to maintain oppressive elements of their culture just for the sake of preserving ”culture”. Culture is basically the end-product of a series of decisions made by our respective forbearers to adapt to their environment. But the thing is the environment is changing. The same way that those inhabitants of Harlem neighborhoods adapted to those new york city buildings in the 1920s, even though they probably were not the original inhabitants of the buildings when they were freshly constructed. So they themselves adapted and made it theirs. The same way we are capable of making these seemingly dystopian environments brought about by urban renewal, ours. For instance, although expressways tend to cause a break in the rhythm of the city, there are a lot of design opportunities posed by the presence of these structures (https://www.wired.com/2016/04/gisela-erlacherthe-skies-of-concrete-unique-urban-spaces-underneath-the-worlds-highways/ ). So it is possible that we can generate interesting solutions around these imposing mega infrastructures. But it is good to separate where these urban renewal schemes failed as a result of the architecture from where it failed as a result of much more complex racial and societal factors.
I think the key idea moving forward is to separate the aspects of these neighborhoods that are actually reflective of the cultures of the people from the aspects that are representative of poverty. Sometimes the line is blurry, but I am positive people who are living in slums would take nicer living conditions any day. Jane Jacobs cites the example of inhabitants of a neighborhood in northern Boston that were able to independently revitalize their environment. She also cites that these immigrants were Europeans (Jacobs, p.9). It is possible that what she saw was the effect of classic assimilation – which, although works easily for white European immigrants, might not work for other demographics.
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York City, New York: Random House.
Tyrnauer, M. (Producer), & Tyrnauer, M. (Producer). (2016). Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Retrieved from http://hulu.com/