While reading Jane Jacobs’ comprehensive discussion of how city sidewalks should ideally be constructed to promote safety, I found myself agreeing with many of the author’s contentions and observations. In particular, I was struck by the idea that the way to make cities safer is not, to make them quieter, but noisier. Ms. Jacobs writes that there is a widespread notion among city planners that the sight of “obvious order and quite” attracts people to a neighborhood and makes them feel safe in that area. This is true – when we think of safe places within cities, we often tend to use phrases such as “quiet, residential area” or “peaceful, family neighborhood.” Ms. Jacobs argues that this idea is, in fact, inaccurate. Instead, she theorizes, people feel safe in areas that bustle with crowds and activities. After a moment of reflection, I realized that she was right – in reality, it may be that the safest sidewalks we can find are the ones that are noisy and crowded and populated by shops.
I have to admit that this was a jarring idea for me to imagine. When we, as urbanites, are out in the commercial districts of the city, we tend to be extremely careful about our personal belongings. However, we almost never exercise such caution in our own neighborhoods. This behavior has something to do with our level of familiarity with our own community in comparison to the busy shopping districts that we might visit once every few months. Curiously, we never think about the safety of our neighborhoods to strangers. It occurs to me that in the giant consortium of apartment buildings that I live in, hearing a loud noise at night is usually considered a nuisance, not a warning. Since we are all so convinced that our neighborhoods are safe places, we tend to lack vigilance.
According to Jacobs, vigilance is key to a safe city. Crimes on the sidewalks are not prevented by constant presence of the police but instead by the careful watchfulness of the community’s residents. She states that this is achieved by making the sidewalks “busy.” For example, having stores in a neighborhood would attract customers who would then provide a steady stream of observers on any sidewalk. With so many people in an area who are engaged with their surroundings as they shop, it would be hard for any criminal to get away with crimes. Also, I was particularly convinced by the argument that any neighborhood with small business will be safe simply because stores, have a vested interest in maintaining order.
Unfortunately, there is one problem that I see with this idea. If a community is populated by a substantial number of small business and tends to be filled with busy activity during the day, it is highly unlikely that it is a place that would attract permanent residents. Commercial districts may be the safest areas, but they are also the noisiest. Additionally, an inherent danger in having a predominance of stores in an area is that as busy as they are during the day, they are just as quite during the night, a time when most stores tend to shut down. The solution to this would be, as I understand from Ms. Jacobs’ writing, to have an ideal mix of stores and residences on every street.
Like Ms. Jacobs shows with the example of crime rates in Los Angeles, making cities less dense and spreading the population over larger areas is the wrong strategy to use for city planners who wish to make their cities safer. There is always safety in numbers, despite and especially because of the fact that in a city, one is surrounded entirely by strangers. By being engaged with our communities and making sure that our streets and sidewalks are well used and well observed, we may be able to make our great cities safe for pedestrians.
I would like to ask Ms. Jacobs what she would do about neighborhoods that “have a reputation.” Attracting small business and/or new and engaged residents to neighborhoods that have already been deemed in the conscious of the city as unfit for occupation due to high rates of crime will be a tough challenge for any city planner. I wonder what Jane Jacobs would do to revitalize such communities?
