Jane Jacobs - Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations

JANE JACOBS: THE LAST INTERVIEW AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS

Copyright 2016 by Melville House Publishing

Disturber of the Peace: Jane Jacobs by Cond Nast. Originally published in Mademoiselle, October 1962

How Westway Will Destroy New York 1978 by Roberta Brandes Gratz. Expanded from New York, February 6, 1978

Godmother of the American City 2000 by James Howard Kunstler. Expanded from Metropolis, March 2001

The Last Interview 2005 by Robin Philpot. First published in The Question of Separatism, Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty (Baraka Books, 2011)

First Melville House printing: April 2016

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933877

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61219-535-3

v3.1

Jane Jacobs, a former associate editor of Architectural Forum, is the author of a vigorous attack on the dogmas of urban redevelopment called The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Since its publication a year ago, it has been much argued and discussed. City planners tend to be highly critical, but people who feel that our cities are being dehumanized have responded enthusiastically to her fresh and imaginative ideas. Diversity, she believes, is the source of urban vitality, and it is achieved by mixtures of residences, business, and industry, of old and new buildings, of rich and poor; of busy streets with short blocks and of many people living together. No matter how they like her assumptions, everyone agrees that she has started something. For the first time in generations, new ideas about what makes a city work are being discussed and even, tentatively, applied. This is the ninth in Mademoiselles series of taped interviews, Disturbers of the Peace.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: If cities are to help us lead a good life, what should they be like?

JACOBS: Well, they have to be very fertile places economically and socially, for the plans of thousands and tens of thousands of people.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: And do you think that proper cities can make for a creative life?

JACOBS: They can in the sense that big cities offer the greatest range of opportunity for people with unusual wares or new ideas. It takes a great big city to support either commerce or culture that isnt absolutely standardized. And if we have big cities that are unable to offer services, then we are not getting the salient advantages. Whats the point of having the disadvantagesand they do existand none of the advantages?

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: But look at the foolish kinds of specialization you get. In New York all the art, for instance, is stuffed into two or three museums instead of being dispersed. The Whitney used to be downtown, but now its just an annex of the Museum of Modern Art.

JACOBS: The idea of officially lumping all like things together is ridiculous. Im convinced people go to the Whitney as an afterthought. When it was in a place by itself people went to see what was there.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: How could you start a reverse process?

JACOBS: These things dont happen inevitably. All this segregation has been deliberately prescribedlike the mammoth museums, the Lincoln Centers, the housing projects. Extraordinary powers of government have been created to make possible such islands of single use, because it was thought that this is the way to organize cities. Its not just a matter of reversing the process, though, because mere planlessness isnt enough. We have bad unplanned areas as well as bad planned ones. Change will come aboutand I believe it willfirst from understanding the problem a city is, and then changing the methods of dealing with it. But theres a step before that, and this sounds negative, but I think we wont really get things done differently and better until citizen resistance makes it impossibleor too frustratingto do things as they are being done now.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: How bad will things have to get before the rebellion begins?

JACOBS: I think its started, not just in New York, but in many other big citiesChicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston. Theres no reason we cant begin improving right now. I certainly dont think we should simply call present methods to a halt and consider that in itself progress. All it is is an opportunity to begin to do things differently and better.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: How important a role does the transportation mess play in the death of great cities?

JACOBS: Its very serious, but its not the cause of our trouble. It wouldnt matter whether we had the automobile or not: the kind of wholesale planning weve been getting would still be very bad planning.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: And the automobile is just an excuse for it?

JACOBS: Yes, one of the excuses, not a reason.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: How about banning private cars from cities?

JACOBS: Thats a pretty negative approach. I think people are pretty suspicious of schemes that offer them nothing for something. We should get rid of the automobiles, but in a positive way. What we need is more things that conflict with their needswider sidewalks, more space for trees, even double lines of trees on some sidewalks, dead ends not for foot traffic but for automobiles, more frequent places for people to cross streets, more traffic lightstheyre an abomination to automobiles, but a boon to pedestrians. And then we should have more convenient public transportation.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: Turn parking lots into skating rinks?

JACOBS: Yes. We constantly sacrifice all kinds of amenities for automobiles. I think we can wear down their number by sacrificing the roadbed to some of our other needs instead. Its a switch in values.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: Do great cities, with all the noise and dirt and bad smells, seem livable places to you, really?

JACOBS: Parts of them are very livable, but these are by no means necessarily the most fashionable parts. Greenwich Village is livable, and the demand for city districts that are lively and interesting to live in and safe on the streets is much greater today than the supply.

AUCHINCLOSS AND LYNCH: Is it really possible to plan more areas in the image of Greenwich Village?