THE THEORIES OF JANE JACOBS

• Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose

writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to
city building.
• She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961
treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,
introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function,
evolve and fail, that now seem like common sense to
generations of architects, planners, politicians and activists.

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A key principle for Jacobs is diversity, what she calls "a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses."

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The benefit of diversity is mutual economic and social support. She advocated that there were four principles to
create diversity:
• The neighborhood should include a mixture of uses or functions. Rather than separating into separate areas the
commercial, industrial, residential, and cultural spaces, Jacobs advocated for intermixing these.

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• Blocks should be short. This would make promote walking to get to other parts of the neighborhood (and buildings
with other functions), and it would also promote people interacting.

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• Neighborhoods should contain a mixture of older and newer buildings. Older buildings might need renovation and
renewal, but should not simply be razed to make room for new buildings, as old buildings made for a more
continuous character of the neighborhood. Her work led to more focus on historical preservation.

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• A sufficiently dense population, she argued, contrary to the conventional wisdom, created safety and creativity, and
also created more opportunities for human interaction. Denser neighborhoods created "eyes on the street" more
than separating and isolating people would.

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Cities as Ecosystems. Jacobs approached cities as living beings and ecosystems. She suggested that over time, buildings, streets and
neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms, changing in response to how people interact with them. She explained how each element of
a city - sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, government, economy - functions together synergistically, in the same manner as the natural
ecosystem. This understanding helps us discern how cities work, how they break down, and how they could be better structured.
Mixed-Use Development. Jacobs advocated for "mixed-use" urban development - the integration of different building types and uses,
whether residential or commercial, old or new. According to this idea, cities depend on a diversity of buildings, residences, businesses and
other non-residential uses, as well as people of different ages using areas at different times of day, to create community vitality. She saw
cities as being "organic, spontaneous, and untidy," and views the intermingling of city uses and users as crucial to economic and urban
development.
Bottom-Up Community Planning. Jacobs contested the traditional planning approach that relies on the judgment of outside experts,
proposing that local expertise is better suited to guiding community development. She based her writing on empirical experience and
observation, noting how the prescribed government policies for planning and development are usually inconsistent with the real-life
functioning of city neighborhoods.
The Case for Higher Density. Although orthodox planning theory had blamed high density for crime, filth, and a host of other problems,
Jacobs disproved these assumptions and demonstrated how a high concentration of people is vital for city life, economic growth, and
prosperity. While acknowledging that density alone does not produce healthy communities, she illustrated through concrete examples how
higher densities yield a critical mass of people that is capable of supporting more vibrant communities. In exposing the difference between
high density and overcrowding, Jacobs dispelled many myths about high concentrations of people.
Local Economies. By dissecting how cities and their economies emerge and grow, Jacobs cast new light on the nature of local economies.
She contested the assumptions that cities are a product of agricultural advancement; that specialized, highly efficient economies fuel long-
term growth; and that large, stable businesses are the best sources of innovation. Instead, she developed a model of local economic
development based on adding new types of work to old, promoting small businesses, and supporting the creative impulses of urban
entrepreneurs.

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