JANE JACOBS 1

Jane Jacobs:

Her Contributions to Urban Planning Through

The Death And Life of Great American Cities

Melissa Garside

Vancouver Island University

Urban and Regional Planning

Professor Shaw

April 23, 2013

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Abstract

Jane Jacobs' book The Death And Life of Great American Cities has been a very widely read and

discussed book. Now over fifty years old, the book has been the topic of many peer­reviewed articles,

not to mention non­scholarly articles and other mediums as well. Her book was initially criticized by

many of the people that she criticized herself in the book, but over time many of the people in these

professions (mainly urban planning and architecture) came to praise her work and were influenced by

it. This research essay briefly outlines The Death And Life of Great American Cities followed by

discussion of nine peer­reviewed articles which have varying perspectives and opinions on Jacobs'

work, presented in a literature review format. My own opinions and thoughts on this subject are

presented following the literature review.

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Jane Jacobs:

Her Contributions to Urban Planning Through

The Death And Life of Great American Cities

Introduction

In 1961, a woman named Jane Jacobs published a book called The Death and Life of Great

American Cities (hereafter referred to simply as The Death and Life). This influential book was the first

of seven books written by Jacobs. The purpose of this book is to criticize and also to offer a remedy for

what she saw at the time to be a lack of understanding of how cities work by the very people who

needed to know it best: the urban planners. In the introduction chapter of the book, Jacobs (1961)

explains the following:

This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an

attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding, different and even

opposite from those now taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning

to the Sunday supplements and women's magazines (p. 3).

The issues discussed in this research essay are important because Jacobs' work has influenced a lot of

people and is often referenced by urban geographers. As a geographer, learning about what she did is

important to me. Her exploration of why studying cities as they are in order to create and maintain

cities which are a good place to live, rather than blindly developing cities in ways that urban planners

think cities ought to be is a seemingly obvious, but apt criticism. Although this book was written in the

1960's, and specifically about American cities, this topic is applicable to Canadian urban and regional

planning in that Canada and the United States of America are similar in many ways, and have similar

cities. Although several decades have passed since this book first came out, people are still reading it

and still talking about it, and Jacobs' legacy is living on even since her death in 2006. This topic/book

has been of big interest to the world of urban planning since it was published over fifty years ago

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because it makes a very thorough argument and discussion as to why some cities/neighbourhoods do

well while others do not. Although Jacobs' work has been criticized, it has also been widely praised, as

the literature review in this essay illustrates. I contest that The Death and Life is a great book which

offers many important insights into the complexities that shape the social and physical conditions of

our cities, and although it is a little bit repetitive to read, I think that everyone with an interest in cities

or who lives in a city should read this book, lest they make the same mistakes that it heeds against.

Figure 1. A famous photograph of Jane Jacobs in which she holds up her evidence to back up her

stance on saving the West Village at a press conference. Source: Photograph taken in 1961 by Phil

Stanziola, New York World­Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of

Congress, Reproduction Number: LC­USZ­62­137838

Literature Review

For the literature review section of this research essay, I will first discuss briefly what The

Death and Life has to tell us, followed by discussing nine peer­reviewed articles about the book and

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Jacobs' work in general. These works will be discussed in a chronological review format, as this

seemed like the most effective way to show how Jacobs' work has been received over the years, how

this has changed or evolved, and how it has remained the same. I am doing this research because

knowing about Jane Jacobs's work is important for urban geography students. There are very many

different things that can be said about and taken from The Life and Death, and throughout my research

this has become obvious above and beyond what I initially took from the book. At the very least,

studying her work is worthwhile because it illustrates how to become involved in issues that matter to

people.

First of all, The Death and Life is a fairly comprehensive book: within the book's 448 pages of

content, there are four distinct parts, each of which encompasses at least four of the book's 22 chapters.

The four different parts are on the following topics: Part One: The Peculiar Nature of Cities; Part Two:

The Conditions For City Diversity; Part Three: Forces of Decline and Regeneration; and Part Four:

Different Tactics. Due to the relatively limited scope of this analysis, this essay will only focus on basic

elements of The Death and Life. The following paragraph from the book's introduction/ first chapter

outlines much of the topics that Jacobs' (1961) discussion covers:

In setting forth principles, I shall mainly be writing about common, ordinary things: for

instance, what kinds of city streets are safe and what kinds are not; why some city parks

are marvelous and others are vice traps and death traps; why some slums stay slums and

other slums regenerate themselves even against financial and official opposition;

what makes downtowns shift their centers; what, if anything, is a city neighborhood, and

what jobs, if any, neighborhoods in great cities do. In short, I shall be writing about how

cities work in real life. . . (p. 3­4).

Jacobs describes urban scenarios of dysfunction and decay (both of social conditions and of the built

environment), as well as scenarios of “social and economic vitality” (p. 4), and uncovers the causes for

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the presence of these conditions, which she believed to have been largely misunderstood or altogether

ignored by the influential urban planners of the time.

The earliest peer­reviewed article (applicable to this topic) that I came across was by Weicher in

1973. Weicher (1973) notes that Jacobs' book was controversial and that many urban planners were

critical of it at first, but some eventually (by the 1970's) became more open to her ideas: “More

recently, Jacobs' views on city planning have been accorded a more sympathetic hearing within the

profession, but it does not appear that the specifics of her theory of success are widely accepted” (p.

29). He goes on to note that he finds it surprising that her theories had not yet been tested in the decade

since her book came out “neither Jacobs nor her critics have attempted to test her theory in any

systematic way; the scanty evidence which has been marshalled on both sides has been largely

anecdotal” (Weicher, 1973, p. 29). Weicher then tests out Jacobs' theory himself with a mathematical

formula devised from “the basic functional relationships which she hypothesizes” (p. 32), which he

applies to various areas of city of Chicago based on the applicable data that he gathered. His findings

were not much in Jacobs' favour: “The empirical results . . . offer little support for Jacobs' theory. In

one case there is support for her hypothesis that high densities are desirable, but for the other two

indicators of success, this hypothesis is refuted” (p. 38). Despite this, Weicher admits that a more in­

depth study may prove more in Jacobs' favour, and he praises her theory for being “readily testable” (p.

39). Aptly, he explains that although his evidence does not support her theory, the theory still holds

value because of the fact that it attempts to explain how neighborhood success works, and in the

absence of another such theory, it is the first step to creating a theory which may hold up to tests.

Next, Schmidt (1977) offers a very similar analysis of Jacobs' book, and indeed a sort of follow­

up to Weicher's report. Schmidt notes Jacobs' four factors that are “essential to neighborhood success:

1) diversity of functional uses, 2) short blocks (accessibility), 3) age diversity in buildings, and 4)

sufficient concentration of people” (p. 54). He goes on to do a similar calculation of Denver's

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adherence to Jacobs' theories as Weicher did of Chicago, and he found data applicable to the above

outlined four important factors. His findings were similar to that of Weicher's 1973 test of Jacobs'

theory: “In general, the hypothesized relationship between the set of neighborhood failure measures

and generators of success was not substantiated” (p. 62). Although his findings suggested that Jacobs'

theory was not viable, he does mention that “Given that Jacobs' theory can be formulated and treated

mathematically with relative ease, it would be worthwhile to investigate these relationships within

cities that vary in size, age, quality of public services, and land use controls” (p. 64), which indicates

that he was not convinced that Jacobs was all wrong.

Fast­forwarding to the 1990's, Jacobs' work was still being discussed with great interest and

detail. Clubbe (1995) discusses Jacobs' 1992 book Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral

Foundations of Commerce and Politics, as well as her other work in general. He articulates many

observations about The Death and Life which I agree with. When Clubbe points out the lack of

illustrations in her book(s), it enlightens me of a thoughtful element of the book which I initially

thought of as the book missing something:

The book has no illustrations. . . .That is the point: you illustrate the books yourself with

your own mental images, you populate the pages with your own visual experience. In

The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jacobs urges readers to look around them,

and 'while you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger, and think about what

you see'” (p. 325).

Clubbe is clearly pro­Jacobs. For instance, in discussing the criticism that the book received, he brings

up how Lewis Mumford attacked the book and was, despite his intellect, “dead wrong”, and goes on to

note that the book soon became a “classic of urban analysis” (p. 325).

Next, I read Montgomery (1998), who reviews Jacobs' intellectual influence over the years, and

gives a brief biography of Jacobs. The resonant elements of The Death and Life which Montgomery

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(1998) focuses his paper on are as follows: the way that Jacobs' describes her love of the city, which

Montgomery refers to as City Love; the eyes on the street ideas she explains, which Montgomery refers

to as Street Eyes; the (slight) influence that she had over the big building projects, of which he titles the

corresponding section Ending Big Projects; and the final section is called Ideology, Urbanization, and

Practise, which looks at the themes of The Death and Life, and brings Montgomery to the conclusion

that Jacobs' first book sends out a political message: “Antigovernment and anti­regulation beliefs,

confidence in the existence of a nearly perfect competitive market, inattention to corporate power,

denial of social class and race as determinative categories, taken altogether look mighty like the core

belief system of libertarian conservatism” (p. 275). Under the Ending Big Projects heading, he points

out the implications of her book and her activism on the built environment: “Fellow journalists and

others have cited Jacobs' The Death and Life as a causal factor in the demise of high­rise public

housing, urban redevelopment, and big freeway projects” (p. 273).

Daniere (2000) points out that Jacobs' ideas have been in influential in not only the United

States of America, but Canada as well: “In Canada, Toronto in particular [where she lived for more

than 30 of the later years of her life], Jacobs' ideas have been adopted by many of the same people,

such as planners and big government . . .” (p. 459). Daniere (2000) also brings up why Jacobs' ideas

have been influential for so long, and she explains:

Canada's urbanists have realized the enormous, exhilerating potential of Jacobs' ideas as

an entire system of thought revealing deeper truths that do not become dated; in fact,

Jacobs' ideas have demonstrated impressive staying power and may help to solve new

problems as they surface (p. 461).

Many ideas do not last as long as Jacobs' have, and the fact that Jacobs' is still so heavily discussed is

proof that there is much to be learned from her.

In 2001, Jacobs wrote a 40th anniversary essay of sorts on The Life and Death called Random

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Comments. This essay is interesting because in it, Jacobs' gives some updates and (what were at the

time) current explanations of what she meant by certain aspects of her book. She also gives her

thoughts on some of the issues of the day, in line with her ways of thinking expressed in The Life and

Death. One such issue that she discusses in this essay is public transportation. She points out that “You

ask what cities tell us now that is different from forty years ago. Much of their information is the same,

but more dependence on automobiles has brought changes” (p. 538). On public transportation, she

discusses how sprawl is an undisputed issue which “. . . wastes land, energy, and time, [and] can't

continue indefinitely”, and that this brings about bigger hype around developing “large, encompassing

transportation plans” (p. 538). Her concern was similar to her framework of concerns presented in The

Life and Death, that in planning a big public transportation system, it would be done ineffectively and

thus create its own problems. In offering what she thinks would be a more successful system, she

describes a system similar to one she experienced while on holiday in the Caribbean, where they had an

independently run transit system which worked based on where people demanded to go rather than

predetermined rigid routes. Although it could not be done quite this simply in large North American

cities, she has a good point that developing comprehensive public transportation must incorporate the

public's input in order to figure out which areas need which level of service, and that the system must

be flexible. This is yet another example of how we need thinkers like Jacobs to be on the look out for

ineffective policies, and to offer creative alternatives which can lead us in the right direction.

Laurence (2006) gives a good understanding of how and why Jacobs' research and findings

were so well done and continue to be relevant. He points out that her research was funded by the

Rockefeller Foundation, and due to this, she developed her scientific researching skills with the help of

learning from a “Foundation affiliate, Dr. Warren Weaver, then one of the most distinguished scientists

of the time” (p. 165).

But what was behind Jacobs' interest in urban issues anyway? In addition to learning good

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research methodology, passion is what makes The Life and Death such a good, and thus important

book. Most of the articles that I came across did not address where her interests came from, they simply

addressed what she had to say about urban issues. Julian (2009), however, does give some context as to

where her motivation and passion on the topic came from. He explains how planning issues in New

York City, which is where she lived at the time of writing The Life and Death, pushed her to become

more involved:

Jacobs had been thinking and writing about city planning for years before actively

involving herself in it, in 1955. Even then, her activism was forced: Robert Moses, New

York City's master builder, had proposed plopping a busy and noisy road right through

the middle of Washington Square Park, near where Jacobs lived (p. 91).

He also points out her foresight: “She realized, long before the experts did, that urban renewal was

renewing nothing and destroying much”, but notes that in practise, Jacobs' ideas have been used

incorrectly by many planners and architects: “their Jacobs­derived beliefs (fewer cars, more

pedestrians, bigger densities) [have been applied] on places where they don't make sense and on people

who oppose them” (p. 95).

Klemek's (2011) article Dead or Alive at Fifty? Reading Jane Jacobs on Her Golden

Anniversary is the final article that I read for this literature review. It is the most recent article in this

collection of articles, and it tells us what the most recent sentiments of Jacobs' fifty­year­old work

entails. Kelemek (2011) offers some insight as to why so much revolutionary social movements and

thinking, such as Jacobs' ideas, were prominent throughout the 1960's: “In retrospect, postwar

America’s smug masculine expertocracy seemed ripe for toppling” (p. 75). In terms of her prescription

to save old buildings, Klemek (2011) notes how the reason behind this has changed over the years:

Jacobs also championed the preservation of older buildings, albeit not for the now

prevailing purpose of fetishizing their scarcity and gilding architectural jewel

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boxes. . . . Instead Jacobs argued that a smattering of older buildings was socially

valuable precisely because they were less economically valuable. . . . They were, in

short, guarantors of social diversity (p. 76).

He does give some criticisms to The Life and Death on the lack of inclusiveness that it has, which

includes how she did not even bother to explain suburbs, nor did she address issues of class and race.

Klemek explains that “her failure to grapple with the fundamental racial and class obstacles that still

inhibit any inclusive urban revival in this country will probably relegate Jacobs’s masterpiece here

largely to an audience of academics, students, and convinced urbanites” (p. 79). Despite this real­

world obstacle, Klemek concludes that he still has much faith in The Life and Death and that he would

still recommend anyone to read it.

Analysis

After studying this topic through more than ten sources, ten of which I have presented here,

through positive and negative responses to Jacobs' book, I continue to have a positive opinion on it.

Even if Jacobs' was not always entirely correct in her assertions, her thorough analysis of the workings

of cities is eye­opening and fascinating. Even though her ideas have been put to use and sometimes not

worked very well, this does not take away from the value of her thoughts, which nevertheless urge us to

be conscious urban problem solvers. I can see myself purchasing my own copy of this book and

periodically playing choose­my­own­urban­geography­adventure with it, whereby I would look

through the index to a topic I had not yet explored in the book. One thing that is quite remarkable about

this book is that people continue to be deeply interested in what it has to tell us, fifty years later.

Throughout the time since it has been published, many people have taken the time to write about

various aspects of the book and the implications that the book has had for them and others. This fact

illustrates just how influential and thought­provoking this book is for people. Because of this, I think

that this book will continue to be read by many over the next fifty years if not longer.

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Conclusions

The Death and Life is an important book which has stood the test of time (over fifty years now

and people are still being influenced by it), and everyone who is interested in cities or who lives in a

city should read read it. Hopefully, by reading this book and being educated about cities from it, people

will better understand the urban environment around them and make positive choices towards making

that city the best possible place for people to live. Striving to make the environments in which we live a

better place is a very charitable cause, and Jacobs' work has done good things for a lot of people,

whether they know it or not. Throughout the large body of dialogue over the last fifty years in response

the The Life and Death, be it positive or negative reviews of Jacobs' theory, it is obvious how much

influence this work has had. It has made people think about cities in ways that they might not have

before reading the book. Being that this is the first literature review that I have ever written, I found

this aspect of presenting my findings to be fairly awkward. Overall, however, I found it very interesting

to discover just how many people are so heavily influenced by Jacobs. When I first embarked on this

project I had no idea just how influential Jacobs was (and continues to be).

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References

Clubbe, J. (1995). Jane Jacobs of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Toronto: Urban survivor and social

organicist. University Of Toronto Quarterly, 64(2), 324.

Daniere, A. (2000). CANADIAN URBANISM AND JANE JACOBS. Journal Of Urban Affairs,

22(4), 459.

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Random House.

Jacobs, J. (2001). RANDOM COMMENTS. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 28(4),

537.

Julian, L. (2009). Who Shapes the City?. Policy Review, (157), 90­96.

Klemek, C. (2011). Dead or Alive at Fifty? Reading Jane Jacobs on Her Golden Anniversary. Dissent

(00123846), 58(2), 75­79.

Laurence, P. L. (2006). The Death and Life of Urban Design: Jane Jacobs, The Rockefeller Foundation

and the New Research in Urbanism, 1955–1965. Journal Of Urban Design, 11(2), 145­172.

doi:10.1080/13574800600644001

Montgomery, R. (1998). Is there still life in The Death and Life?. Journal Of The American Planning

Association, 64(3), 269.

Schmidt, C. G. (1977). Influence of Land Use Diversity Upon Neighborhood Success: an Analysis of

Jacobs' Theory (Book Review). Annals Of Regional Science, 11(1), 53.

Stanziola, P. (1961, December 5). Mrs. Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Comm. to save the West Village

holds up documentary evidence at press conference at Lions Head Restaurant at Hudson &

Charles Sts. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. Image Retrieved from

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008677538/

“The City Planners Are Ravaging Our Cities!” (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Random House Ad. Title Page Image Retrieved from

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/78175613@N00/5694287441

Weicher, J. C. (1973). A Test of Jane Jacobs' Theory of Successful Neighborhoods. Journal Of

Regional Science, 13(1), 29.