|
First, she saved Manhattan
The Winnipeg Free Press
Focus, Saturday, April 29, 2006, p. a17
First, she saved Manhattan
DALLAS HANSEN
For those who followed and admired her work, the death Tuesday of urban
philosopher Jane Jacobs was moving and profound. Among the many
achievements of her long life, it could be said she was, more than
anyone else, single-handedly responsible for saving Manhattan from a
destructive disaster far worse than Sept. 11, 2001. Were it not for her
1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and her
indefatigable activism, there would today be a freeway connecting the
Holland Tunnel with the Manhattan Bridge, sacrificing the beloved
neighbourhoods of SoHo, Chinatown, and Greenwich Village.
Soon after moving to Toronto in 1969, she saved that city from a
similar fate, leading the protest against the planned Spadina
Expressway that would have razed that city's Chinatown.
The Death And Life of Great American Cities was a moving work whose
effects can be seen throughout North America in efforts to rebuild
inner cities damaged by modernism. Her identification of four key
generators of city diversity -- mixed residential and commercial uses,
short blocks, aged buildings, density -- have helped planners crack the
code that defines what makes some neighbourhoods safe and successful
and others dull and dangerous.
Her work profoundly influenced the direction of my own life, leading me
to pinpoint Commercial Drive in Vancouver as an ideal place to live,
and live there I did for six years. It was during a visit home to
Winnipeg in June 2000 that I saw my hometown's urban problems. I was
moved to write my first-ever piece for the Free Press opinion page,
"Replace modernism with mixed use."
There's little evidence that Jacobs' ideas have had an impact in
Winnipeg. There's some mixed-use proposals for St. Boniface's
Provencher Boulevard and downtown's Waterfront Drive, but Jacobs, who
never wrote about Winnipeg, probably would have best liked Main Street
in the pre-modernist era, when the streetcars kept the streets teeming
and certain single blocks of storefront businesses offered a diversity
of services -- cafs, grocers, boutiques, hardware stores, barbers,
tailors, etc. -- far greater than today's automobile-centric shopping
malls.
"The activity generated by people on errands, or people aiming for food
or drink, is itself an attraction to still other people," wrote Jacobs
in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. "[T]hat the sight of
people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and
city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They
operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness,
obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. People's love of
watching activity and other people is constantly evident in cities
everywhere."
Besides her famous rows with Robert Moses, New York's expressway-mad
master builder, Jacobs aimed her most ruthless criticism at the ideas
of Ebenezer Howard -- the late 19th century utopian planner who
envisioned a low-density, town-country hybrid "Garden City" separating
residences, industry, and agriculture -- and Swiss architect Le
Corbusier, whose "Radiant City" schemes of Internationalist-style
towers-in-the-park living became the archetype for public housing
projects throughout the U.S. and especially in East Germany and the
Soviet Union.
Jacobs stayed at work well into her 80s; her last book, Dark Age Ahead
(Random House, 2004) lamented the breakdown of communities and families
("families rigged to fail"), society's emphasis on credentials rather
than education, and the mass amnesia associated with dark ages, where
even the memory of what was lost is lost. "When Portland, Oregon,
bought some [streetcars] recently, it had to order them from the Czech
Republic," she writes, "because the U.S. streetcar manufacturing
industry, once the largest and most technologically advanced in the
world, no longer exists." Indeed, an often-mentioned theme in Dark Age
Ahead is the General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy, in which streetcar
systems were torn up in 146 jurisdictions throughout North America.
Many young people living in those places today might not be aware that
streetcars once served their streets; even if they are aware, they
might not know how extensive were those systems. (How many Winnipeggers
today know our city streets once enjoyed over 200 kilometres of
streetcar lines?)
At the time of her death, Jacobs was at work on two manuscripts, but
they are sure to find their way to print. Her body may have passed, but
her ideas have more life than ever.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Real estate industry; Architecture and urban
planning
Length: Medium, 612 words
© 2006 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved..
www.dallashansen.com |
|
|
|
