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During the modernist movement, Jacobs pushed back against the idea of the ideal city as something to be reduced to binaries and managed by experts, arguing instead for an understanding of it as an ever-evolving place shaped by those who inhabit it.<\/p>\n
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Jane Jacobs handing out brochures and speaking with neighbors on Hudson Street about the proposed West Village Houses affordable housing project, West Village, 1963 | photo courtesy Bob Gomel<\/p>\n
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an ideal city planned from above?<\/p>\n
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For centuries, utopia existed as a projection. In Thomas More\u2019s Utopia, published in 1516, the city is a complete and ordered world that\u2019s already resolved. The appeal comes from its distance. It stands apart from the confusion of existing cities, offering a clean arrangement of space and society.<\/p>\n
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Later into the twentieth century, modernist planning carries forward that impulse with renewed conviction. Take Le Corbusier\u2019s Ville Radieuse as a clear example, where the city is conceived from above as a field of tall cruciform towers set within open green space, arranged along strict axes and separated by function. Housing, work, circulation, and leisure are each assigned their own zones, connected by wide, fast-moving roads designed for efficiency rather than encounter.<\/p>\n
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The promise is immediate in its logic, as congestion is eliminated and circulation is streamlined. It is a legible vision where complexity is resolved ahead of time, and urban life is organized into a system that can be planned and predicted.<\/p>\n
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Le Corbusier\u2019s \u2018contemporary city\u2019, 1925<\/p>\n
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orderly visions disconnected from people<\/p>\n
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Paul Rudolph pushed that logic toward excess with his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway megastructure. Commissioned in 1967, the proposal stacks highways, streets, and parking into a continuous elevated framework, with triangulated bands supporting new construction above. Circulation moved along elevated \u2018people movers,\u2019 and the concept of sidewalk life is overlooked.<\/p>\n
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While it may seem visionary to some critics, the plan was undoubtably invasive. Ultimately it collapsed when the expressway itself was vetoed in 1969, with Jacobs a major figure in the protests.<\/p>\n
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Jane Jacobs looks at these proposals and sees something that\u2019s not so optimistic, warning of their soullessness and disconnect from humanity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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She writes of these modernist visions: \u2018They appear so orderly, so visible, so easy to understand\u2026 like a good advertisement.\u2018 But how does the city work once people begin to use it? How does it hold together across hours, across seasons, across small daily habits made without coordination?<\/p>\n
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Paul Rudolph\u2019s Lower Manhattan Expressway proposal, 1967<\/p>\n
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a celebration of sidewalk life<\/p>\n
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Jane Jacobs\u2019 answer to utopia comes from observation. She writes of stoops, storefronts, sidewalks, and corners because these are real places that never appear in plans.<\/p>\n
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A sidewalk, she argues, \u2018by itself is nothing.\u2018 It gains its meaning through the buildings that line it and the doors that open onto it, and especially through the overlapping uses that keep it active throughout the day and evening. It\u2019s a city\u2019s main public space and, when it functions well, it supports a shared sense of trust. And trust between people cannot be masterplanned.<\/p>\n
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Jane Jacobs at a 1968 protest against the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway<\/p>\n
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diversity of use: a city full of life<\/p>\n
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While Jane Jacobs\u2019 ideas of the urban utopia are born from a neighborhood\u2019s sidewalk life, her argument extends into the structure of the city itself. She writes about \u2018diversity of use,\u2019 noting that a neighborhood is most successful when it supports different functions at once. Workplaces bring people during the day, and homes maintain activity during the evenings and weekends. Shops and recreation fill the hours between.<\/p>\n
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\u2018The district must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two.\u2018 she explains. \u2018These must insure 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.\u2018<\/p>\n
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In short, people must arrive to a neighborhood for different reasons at different hours. When its uses overlap, they reinforce one another. When they separate, the place will become a deserted wasteland during large swaths of the day, and will lose the ability to sustain itself.<\/p>\n
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