In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs discusses the importance of public spaces in cities—places where residents can socialize and develop a sense of community and trust. Public spaces instill a sense of togetherness in neighborhoods. They allow for residents to occasionally and voluntarily interact with each other in ways like exchanging nods or getting advice from the local grocer. They’re interactions that are meaningful enough to establish a sense of community, but they do not require you to get too personal. Jacobs argues that in areas with no public spaces, there are no places for interactions like these to play out, so residents must resort to exposing large amounts of their private lives with neighbors or being completely isolated from those living around you, both of which are not ideal for the average resident.
When reading Jacobs’ book, something that immediately came to mind regarding public spaces and social interactions in cities were the hangout spots in popular television sitcoms such as MacLaren’s Pub in How I Met Your Mother and Monk’s Cafe in Seinfeld. The entirety of Cheers is set in a bar in Boston, and the entire show is just watching all of the bar regulars interacting with each other like Jacobs describes. These sitcoms all exemplify the social interactions in public spaces that Jane Jacobs says contributes to the sense of community, togetherness, and trust in cities. Even the public characters that Jacobs describes—people in contact with a wide circle of people like storekeepers and barkeepers—can be seen in minor characters. Gunther in Friends, Carl and Wendy the Waitress in How I Met Your Mother and even Sam as as the main character in Cheers fulfill these roles as the public characters since they interact with the residents of the neighborhood, listening to stories and giving information. Perhaps one of the most iconic sitcom hangout spots is Central Perk from Friends, a cafe in Greenwich Village that the six characters frequent. In the opening scene of the pilot episode of Friends, you can clearly see interaction within the public space:
One thing should be taking into consideration when comparing these shows to Jacobs’ book, however, and that is the fact that these shows all depict pretty well off neighborhoods. Something that struck out to me in the reading was the point that Jacobs made about the difference in neighbor interactions between higher income neighborhoods and areas of lower income. Jacobs says,
“City residential planning that depends, for contact among neighbors, on personal sharing of this sort, and that cultivates it, often does work well socially, if rather narrowly, for self-selected upper-middle-class people. It solves easy problems for an easy kind of population. So far as I have been able to discover, it fails to work, however, even on its own terms, with any other kind of population” (Jacobs 65).
In this quote, Jacobs says that if the city planning does not supply public areas to naturally socialize, residents will either have to actively go out and share their private lives with their neighbors or they will fall into isolation. She says in areas occupied with upper-middle class people, this system of social interaction worked. However, the residents of other neighborhoods were not able to thrive in this system. “The more common outcome in cities, where people are faced with the choice of sharing much or nothing, is nothing” (Jacobs 65).
When considering the neighborhoods depicted in these sitcoms, I think Jacobs’ point is pretty clear. The characters in these shows actively seeked out connections with their neighbors, and as a result, they formed friendships and the premise of their shows. Joey and Chandler made meaningful relationships with the girls next door and Kramer constantly interacts with his neighbor Jerry in Seinfeld. If these characters lived in a lower income area, then perhaps the dynamic between characters would be very different. Maybe the characters would not even interact with each other at all. This leads me to three questions:
- How accurately do city-based sitcoms depict city life and the situations that Jane Jacobs describes?
- How would the shows and characters be different if they were set in a lower income neighborhood?
- Are there any shows that are set in a lower neighborhood with a lack of public space, as Jane Jacobs describes?
And also as an extra thought, considering that Friends is set in Greenwich Village, how would the show be different if Robert Moses succeeded in building the highway through Washington Square Park?
