The Jane Jacobs Way.
Adapted from ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ by Jane Jacobs.
Proximity is the vital ingredient that makes all urban areas tick. It is this proximity that enables people to exchange ideas, goods, fashion, beliefs, knowledge and anything else they see fit, generating the diversity that the most valued places all share. It is when people come together that mankind's greatest achievements and most engaging environments have been realised. And it is when this proximity is diluted that the success of urban areas is most harmed.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in a city’s streets and other public spaces. However, to realise the full potential of proximity a place must also be accessible – as many people as possible must be able to exploit this proximity. Problems arise when the infrastructure required to gain access actually harms this proximity (and therefore diversity) that people are trying to reach. Too often it has been shown that blindly trying to increase the narrow objective of accessibility actually does more harm than good. The right conditions for diversity can differ enormously from one place to another, but it is always about the diversity of choices that they offer a city’s inhabitants.
The diversity that is generated by cities rests on the fact that so many people, with so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies and bees in their bonnets, are so close together. Moreover, vital for efficient trade in ideas, services, skills, personnel and goods, is effective, fluid transportation and communication – it is impossible to take advantage of multiplicity of choice without being able to get around easily.
Streets, as the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull. When it comes to understanding and intervening in our cities, and especially their streets, too often we are guilty of thinking of them as chaotic systems. But like anything else that is highly complex, understanding brings clarity.
Ultimately, we want lively, well-used streets. The following is an approach for understanding and achieving them.
Conditions
Very little can be learned from a city street if its constituent parts are studied in isolation. It is an abstraction. For example, a ‘road’ will only be properly understood if viewed in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it. Similarly, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of contemplating a city’s uses one at a time, by categories. Indeed, just this – analysis of cities, use by use – has become a customary starting point for those responsible for our streets. But objects in cities – whether they are buildings, streets, parks, districts, landmarks, or anything else – can have radically differing effects depending upon the circumstances and contexts in which they exist. Thus, for instance, almost nothing useful can be understood or can be done about improving city streets if these are considered in the abstract as ‘the road network’. City streets – either existing or potential – are specific and particularised, always involved in differing, specific processes unique to their context.
To understand cities we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomenon. A city’s very structure consists of a mixture of uses, and we get closest to its structural secrets when we deal with the conditions that generate diversity. This diversity is at the heart of all successful cities and their streets.
A mixture of uses, if it is to be sufficiently complex to sustain city safety, public contact and cross-use, needs an enormous diversity of ingredients. So the challenge for those charged with creating and maintaining successful city streets is this – how can they generate enough mixture among uses and enough diversity throughout enough of their territories to sustain their own civilisation?
To generate diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:
Choices
The prevailing conditions in a city are the main influence on people’s choices. Is the street lighting so poor that people don’t feel safe walking the streets at night? Is public transport so inconvenient or expensive that people won’t consider leaving the car at home? Is the main road so difficult to cross that parents won’t let their children outside unsupervised? The right conditions are no guarantee for success. You cannot force people to use streets and make them successful (and make no mistake, it is people that ultimately decide), but without them, a place will lack commercial choices as well as cultural interest, be inconvenient to move around and be particularly unwelcoming at night.
It is not enough for those responsible for our streets to only understand the latest design techniques or cutting edge solutions (although these are important). They must thoroughly understand specific places. Much of what those formally responsible for our streets need to know they can learn from no-one but the people of the place, because nobody else knows enough about it. City processes in real life are too complex to be routine, too particularised for application as abstractions. They are always made-up of interactions among unique combinations of particulars, and there is no substitute for knowing particulars.
Catalysts
Once we understand that enabling peoples choices is critical to successful cities and their streets, it follows that one must think of catalysts of these choices. The science of city planning and the art of city design must become the science and art of introducing catalysts that will enhance the existing conditions to encourage positive choices. Improvements must come by supplying the conditions for encouraging positive choices that are either missing or currently unattractive. Too often this aim becomes impossible to further where accommodating cars has been given first consideration, while other street uses get the leftovers.
Planning for vitality must stimulate and catalyse the greatest possible range and quantity of diversity among uses and among people throughout each district of a city. This is the underlying foundation of city economic strength, social vitality and magnetism. To do this, planners must diagnose specifically what is lacking (conditions) to generate diversity (choices), and then aim at helping to supply the lacks as best they can be supplied (catalysts).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in a city’s streets and other public spaces. However, to realise the full potential of proximity a place must also be accessible – as many people as possible must be able to exploit this proximity. Problems arise when the infrastructure required to gain access actually harms this proximity (and therefore diversity) that people are trying to reach. Too often it has been shown that blindly trying to increase the narrow objective of accessibility actually does more harm than good. The right conditions for diversity can differ enormously from one place to another, but it is always about the diversity of choices that they offer a city’s inhabitants.
The diversity that is generated by cities rests on the fact that so many people, with so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies and bees in their bonnets, are so close together. Moreover, vital for efficient trade in ideas, services, skills, personnel and goods, is effective, fluid transportation and communication – it is impossible to take advantage of multiplicity of choice without being able to get around easily.
Streets, as the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull. When it comes to understanding and intervening in our cities, and especially their streets, too often we are guilty of thinking of them as chaotic systems. But like anything else that is highly complex, understanding brings clarity.
Ultimately, we want lively, well-used streets. The following is an approach for understanding and achieving them.
Conditions
Very little can be learned from a city street if its constituent parts are studied in isolation. It is an abstraction. For example, a ‘road’ will only be properly understood if viewed in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it. Similarly, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of contemplating a city’s uses one at a time, by categories. Indeed, just this – analysis of cities, use by use – has become a customary starting point for those responsible for our streets. But objects in cities – whether they are buildings, streets, parks, districts, landmarks, or anything else – can have radically differing effects depending upon the circumstances and contexts in which they exist. Thus, for instance, almost nothing useful can be understood or can be done about improving city streets if these are considered in the abstract as ‘the road network’. City streets – either existing or potential – are specific and particularised, always involved in differing, specific processes unique to their context.
To understand cities we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomenon. A city’s very structure consists of a mixture of uses, and we get closest to its structural secrets when we deal with the conditions that generate diversity. This diversity is at the heart of all successful cities and their streets.
A mixture of uses, if it is to be sufficiently complex to sustain city safety, public contact and cross-use, needs an enormous diversity of ingredients. So the challenge for those charged with creating and maintaining successful city streets is this – how can they generate enough mixture among uses and enough diversity throughout enough of their territories to sustain their own civilisation?
To generate diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:
- The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must ensure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.
- Connections are vital. They result in different people, bent on different purposes, appearing at different times, but using the same streets. These options and choices are also powerful elements that generate excitement and interest on the street for they allow people to experience and explore unknown experiences.
- The district must provide premises across a range of prices, particularly at the affordable end, whether they are residential, office, retail, etc. In a successful city with a growing population this can only be achieved through new, more efficient building.
- There must be a fairly dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentrations in the case of people who are there because of residence.
Choices
The prevailing conditions in a city are the main influence on people’s choices. Is the street lighting so poor that people don’t feel safe walking the streets at night? Is public transport so inconvenient or expensive that people won’t consider leaving the car at home? Is the main road so difficult to cross that parents won’t let their children outside unsupervised? The right conditions are no guarantee for success. You cannot force people to use streets and make them successful (and make no mistake, it is people that ultimately decide), but without them, a place will lack commercial choices as well as cultural interest, be inconvenient to move around and be particularly unwelcoming at night.
It is not enough for those responsible for our streets to only understand the latest design techniques or cutting edge solutions (although these are important). They must thoroughly understand specific places. Much of what those formally responsible for our streets need to know they can learn from no-one but the people of the place, because nobody else knows enough about it. City processes in real life are too complex to be routine, too particularised for application as abstractions. They are always made-up of interactions among unique combinations of particulars, and there is no substitute for knowing particulars.
Catalysts
Once we understand that enabling peoples choices is critical to successful cities and their streets, it follows that one must think of catalysts of these choices. The science of city planning and the art of city design must become the science and art of introducing catalysts that will enhance the existing conditions to encourage positive choices. Improvements must come by supplying the conditions for encouraging positive choices that are either missing or currently unattractive. Too often this aim becomes impossible to further where accommodating cars has been given first consideration, while other street uses get the leftovers.
Planning for vitality must stimulate and catalyse the greatest possible range and quantity of diversity among uses and among people throughout each district of a city. This is the underlying foundation of city economic strength, social vitality and magnetism. To do this, planners must diagnose specifically what is lacking (conditions) to generate diversity (choices), and then aim at helping to supply the lacks as best they can be supplied (catalysts).
