As I was reading Tochterman’s “Theorizing Neoliberal Urban Development: A Genealogy from Richard Florida to Jane Jacobs,” I kept thinking back to Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities and the way in which ideas are interpreted or rather, misinterpreted. Tochterman writes a great deal about the manipulation of Jacob’s theories on city planning. According to him, they were not well defined and as a result of this, many urban planners built on her ideas to the extent that they support gentrification. Tochterman seems to believe that much of Jacob’s theory is naive and does not pan out. For example, an insistence to keep old and new buildings alike drive up the costs of living in the neighborhood instead of creating affordable housing in the older buildings as originally theorized by Jacobs. This almost misinterpretation of her intentions reminded me of the way in which developers and city planners such as Robert Moses used Title I and II to their advantage to build spaces such as Lincoln Center instead of affordable housing for low-income residents as intended by the laws. This draws on the subtleties of policymaking, and the need for clear cut lines, void of space to interpret.
Tochterman also describes the ways in which Jacob’s view of a neighborhood that organically develops is not easily replicated. This reminded me of M.C. Escher’s, Liberation. To me, this drawing replicates exactly what Jacobs was trying to avoid. She repelled the idea of separate almost wild parts of cities being clinically organized into homogenous spaces. When I look at Escher’s Liberation, the bottom half represents Moses’ vision of the city, and the top half represents Jacob’s. Ideally, both flow and work to create a beautiful design, but I think the difference is in the execution of these visions. Whereas Moses’ vision of an orderly and structured city results in highways that bisect the very life of the city, Jacob’s vision of a dynamic and free-flowing city is assumably difficult to create or save (as neighborhoods with creative hubs tend to oust the poor when middle-class people move in), even with her outline of the crucial components of cities. Both of these visions can be easily distorted when reinterpreted after the fact.
Questions to think about:
Is it the responsibility of the policymaker/ theorizer to be clear of their intentions or are their ideas up for interpretation once published?
Is an entirely Moses’ city or entirely Jacob’s city realistic in application? What would this look like?
Which vision does the city replicate more clearly now? What would Tochterman think about this?
