The soul-sapping death of smart cities

Jane Jacobs is often heralded as the planning world's heroine - the woman with determination and grit who saved Greenwich Village from being destroyed in the 60s to make way for a freeway.  She fought for a city neighborhood brimming with life that she described eloquently in her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Unfortunately, only a portion of Jacob's message has made it into the modern planners' lexicon:  "eyes on the street," "walkable neighborhoods," "24-hour neighborhoods," and (ick) "vibrancy."  But they seem to miss what actually motivated Jacobs' campaign - the idea that neighborhoods belonged to and were defined by the people who lived in them, not the professional planners who knew better how the masses ought to live.  They also missed the part about the blending of the old and new, and the low-rise buildings that gave the streets a human, livable scale.

In their push to force a top-down, developer-friendly, high-density agenda, planners today are not thinking about who they are designing for, and much like Robert Moses, most do not respect or understand the indigenous cultures they encounter.

On Chatterbox, Brian Libby's blog on Portland architecture, he posts an interview with planning researcher Andrew Powe, excerpts below: 

From simply looking around, Jacobs believed that low-rise streets with mixtures of older buildings provided the most vibrant urban communities, the best places for small business innovation and safer public places.  She railed against skyscrapers and the scrape-and-rebuild philosophy of urban renewal aimed at eliminating urban "blight." 

Many planners struck back with venom.  Old buildings, they said, stood in the way of progress.  Cities that did not renew themselves were doomed to eventual failure.

Now there is impressive new evidence based on massive compilations of data that were not available in Jacobs' day.  Bottom line?  "Jane Jacobs was right," said Michael Powe, senior research manager for the Preservation Green Lab, a Seattle-based research arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Powe, who holds a doctorate in

planning and design, laid out the results of the trust's "Older, Smaller, Better" research report in a talk in Portland on October 7 at the Architectural Heritage Center.  Based on intensive statistical analyses performed with data from Aeattle, San Francisco and Washington DC, the report says commercial streets with a mix of building ages and sizes provide the most economic, social and cultural benefits.  

Powe did not describe himself as a preservationist.  And he expressed no intellectual virulence against new buildings on vacant land.  "Where you have the old and new rubbing together , there is greater friction and greater street life," Powe said.  

Streets with the highest [character] scores were those with the highest variety of building ages and sizes and with multiple ownerships.  In general, these same streets had the best walkability scores, the most independently-owned businesses, the most minority and women-owned businesses, and the most successful independent bars and restaurants. 

"A lot of these things we already knew," Powe said of the Green Lab conclusions.  "The data are important to policy-makers.  It is good to have the numbers to back it up."

The bottom line of Powe's message: "Character and scale of buildings matter.  Think about preservation.  Think about why it works.  Don't be afraid to blend old and new.   Don't tear down all old buildings.  Be smart about design.  Encourage the interplay between old and new."

Score these photos:

Hawthorne Blvd., mix of shops of different sizes and ages.

New mixed-use development on Hawthorne Blvd.