Jane Jacobs’ introduction to The Death and Life of Great American Cities briefly touches upon an issue that applies not only to the building of cities but across a wide range of social problems. She speaks of a housing project in East Harlem where the tenants seem to be disproportionately unhappy with a rectangular lawn that most other people approved of. One tenant articulated, “Nobody cared what we wanted when they built this place…Nobody cared what we need. But the big men come and look at that grass and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Now the poor have everything!’” (Jacobs 15) It reminds me of the novel Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev which illustrates the cognitive dissonance that the protagonist, Bazarov, experiences by considering himself as an everyman although he was an educated upper middleclass man. He thought he understood and spoke for the poor but was disproved by his interactions with the peasants. This relates to the problem of the liberal elite (including those of the modern day) where there is a disconnect between them and the common man, though they claim that they do things for the common man. Their personal education gives them an upper edge where they believe that they know better than those they are making decisions for. It’s disappointing that even the social worker, someone meant to care about and represent these people, was confused when the tenants expressed their dissension of the lawn. There is a tension caused by an expectation of how things “should” be versus what they actually are and how they work.
I think it’s important that Jane Jacobs was a social activist that spoke simply as a member of the community and brought attention to the democratic aspect of cities. Cities are linked to democracy through the way in which its success represents democratic values and its demise is for the same reasons as the fall of a democracy: “corruption, tyranny, homogenization, overspecialization, cultural drift and atrophy” (Rich, 2016). In a world that was constructed and set in place by Robert Moses, an incredibly powerful force in society, she provides a reactionary response — going so far as to speak boldly on the negative relationships that government can have with big businesses (Bellafante 2017). It’s always difficult to be the first one to take a stance or identify a problem because you are paving a way that had not been there previously, presenting a completely new lens through which one can look. Though Jacobs inspired community activism, “there are times when community groups may have too parochial a vision to be taken as guides to a city’s future” (Rothstein 2007). With Jacobs’ focus on city diversity and economic flourishing it’s easy to prescribe idealistic expectations to the city that it doesn’t necessarily have an obligation to. This is also shown in her seventh chapter where she introduces the idea of intersectionality. She says “to understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena” (Jacobs 144). Jacobs’ ideas are “grounded not in theory, but in experience” (Rothstein 2007) giving a unique point of view at tackling prevalent problems that need to be addressed — such as the 4 conditions that she claims generate diversity. Though some of Jacobs’ statements are not completely reasonable or accurate, she presents a vision that should, nonetheless, be taken into consideration.
References:
Bellafante G (2017) Learning from Jane Jacobs, who saw today’s city yesterday. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/nyregion/jane-jacobs-citizen-jane-film.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FJacobs%2C%20Jane (last accessed 27 February 2018)
Rich N (2016) The prophecies of Jane Jacobs. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-prophecies-of-jane-jacobs/501104/ (last accessed 27 February 2018
Rothstein E (2007) Jane Jacobs, foe of plans and friend of city life. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/arts/design/25jaco.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FJacobs%2C%20Jane (last accessed 27 February 2018)
