The Jane Jacobs reading and subsequent videos provided valuable insight between the struggles of urban planners and the residents that would be affected by developmental projects. She draws attention to the fact that urban planning theory revolves around construction principles that have widely been accepted as truth, even though when put into practice produce less than favorable results for the kinds of environments they were designed to bolster. She draws parallels between old medical practices and architectural principles to point out that even though one may expand on an idea so thoroughly it seems sound, that it remains flawed at its core. “And to put it bluntly, they are all in the same stage of elaborately learned superstition as medical science was early in the last century, when physicians put their faith in bloodletting…” (Jacobs 12). Much like how doctors elaborated on bloodletting, urban planners tend to elaborate on the idea that an impoverished area can be gut and opened time and time again to improve the area. However, as seen with Morningside Heights, this has been proven not to be true.
Jacobs draws attention to the North End of Boston as an example of how we as architects can learn how to problem solve based on human behavior, rather than constructing a city and hoping that its residents will follow a speculative pattern. She mention how tenants would open up clustered buildings and would reduce population density just by making small modifications to old buildings, which produced favorable results among the community. Urban problems don’t always require total renovation, but minor fixes to already existing areas.
An important issue that Jacobs brings up as well is the seemingly never ending battle between urban planners and community members. As we saw with Moses, it seems there is an tug of war between professionals who think they have the answer, and residents that know about the intricacies of their home. This is why I coined the term architectural tunnel vision, because it seems once planners have a solution they believe will work they shut out the feedback from people that would be directly affected. This is an issue I brought up when talking about Corbusier, because designing a city isn’t the hardest thing about planning, it’s getting the residents to behave that would produce the most favorable outcome for the plan. However, this seems to almost never work. Jacobs reminds us that grand plans and theory aren’t always the most important aspects to solving urban issues, and that listening to the people who actually live in these areas might produce more favorable outcome in the future.
Citations:
Jacobs, Jane. 1984. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.