Book: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Thursday, June 24th, 2004For my last birthday my friends Mitch, Deb, and Ryan got me the book
title="The Death and Life of Great American Cities @ Amazon.com">The Death and
Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I had heard about it a
little bit but only recently saw more pointed discussion about it on
Kottke’s site and I was intrigued.
Over the last month or so I’ve been reading it on the train to and from work
with the exception of a
title="Book Review: Syrup and Jennifer Government">much needed
fiction break. I have to say, Jacobs has done a good job of making sure
examples are clear and understandable and going through and referring to them
so that all of her assertions and statements tie into one another.
Even though the book was written in the early sixties there are still many
cases where Jacobs’ warnings about what not to do still apply. Some of the
examples felt a little dated but at no time were they no longer relevant to
explaining the situation at hand. I often found myself looking back on when I
lived in New York (or forward to the few examples from San Francisco) and
trying to see how things have changed in the intervening 40 years. Some
things haven’t changed and others have gotten better. It seems to me that some
city planning now gets the ideas Jacobs was putting forward and there is
definite progress in making cities less sterile and more functional than
previous planners would have done.
I was particularly struck by the talk about parks. I had never really stopped
and thought about parks as possibly areas that are detriments to neighborhoods,
even though I’ve seen bad parks before. I guess that plane of thought is
just from what has been beat into the public about what is good and what isn’t
in a city. Ideas that Jacobs soundly debunks.
Near where I work (between the Mission District and Protrero Hill in San
Francisco) there is a park called Franklin Square. I’ve never really thought
about the park before other than seeing it from the street. Generally I’m
walking on the opposite side of the street from it and when I do walk next to
it I don’t pay it any mind. It always seems to have some construction and
parts of it appear fenced off. There are also a lot of homeless people that
hang out in the park from what I can see. That combined with few entrances
(the park is on a hill so from at least two sides there is a retaining wall
around it that is quite foreboding) and general lack of kempt make it a place
to avoid. There is never any reason to go through the park even though that
could be a nicer route were it a nicer park. I was actually shocked to learn
from a little web searching that Franklin Square
title="Franklin Square History">has quite the history and at one time
was a well regarded park. I’m not sure if the park is used much now and
honestly it doesn’t really look like it is well utilized, but it seems as
though there might be efforts to rehabilitate it. It’s actually kind of funny
because many of us at work have lamented the fact that there is no nearby park
(but there is, Franklin Square) that we could go and sit in to eat lunch.
Instead we end up on the much more desolate roof of our building. It has a
nice view but not so much greenery or shade.
Of the four sections of the book the first two seemed to drag a little bit, but
I realized later Jacobs was just laying down the groundwork for what was to
come, feeding fuel into the fire if you will. The third and fourth sections
were the ones I liked the best. They dealt totally with how to identify what
is wrong in a city and how to go about correcting it. cities are amazing
entities that I am still awed at every day. Even a small city like San
Francisco has it’s share of dumb luck, bad planning, and corrective
behavior from within.
Now that I’ve finished the book I’m going to see what I notice as I go about
my life in the Bay Area. While reading the book I was also able to pick up
on some good concepts about work and the way things should be setup and
coddled as they relate to cities, but that’s a post for another time.
