So You Want a Revolution (Part 1)

Few authors reach the fame of Jane Jacobs, whose masterpiece The Death and Life of Great American Cities celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. In the best tradition of radical reformers, Jacobs wrote and acted to influence the political process and offer constructive options to urban sprawl and decline.

In examining urban settlements through history, Jacobs concluded that “lively diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.” She saw cities as dynamic eco-systems that required those designing and preserving the built environment to respect natural patterns of human use and interaction.  

For Jacobs, diversity was a natural part of neighborhood evolution. “You don’t get new products and services out of sameness, she said. “This is one of the things that is boring people – this sameness. All kinds of things show us … that the more diverse we are in what we can do the better.”  

Jacobs had little patience for standardization and far less for regulation.  And as a grassroots urban activist, she continued to rail against federal intercession in local affairs that caused the “self-destruction of diversity.” Jacobs offered an alternative she called “unslumming and its accompanying self-diversification.”  She urged the continued but gradual flow of money and public buildings into established communities.

 While Jacobs spoke critically of planning and planners, she encouraged people to enjoy and think about their environments. After decades of fighting the establishment, Jacobs welcomed the emergence of environmental and community groups pressing for green infill development, sustainable smart growth, and the reclamation of degraded land.  

Jacobs died in 2006, the year after the Sierra Club published a guide to “America’s best new development projects.” The Sierra Club report highlighted twelve projects “based on their ability to offer transportation choices, revitalize neighborhoods, and preserve local values” – characteristics that Jacobs had proffered a half century earlier. Given more time, she undoubtedly would have reported on the evolution of these projects and the way these communities have embraced their diversity through affordable, green developments. 

Jacobs urged in The Death and Life of Great American Cities that we imbue our cities and their neighborhoods with the ability to update, enliven, and repair themselves by breaking traditional barriers, taking a balanced, regional approach, and promoting inclusive growth.  If successful, she told us, they would be “sought after, out of choice, by a new generation.”   That generation, and all generations, still have much to learn from Jacobs’ words and wisdom.