“We came to Toronto,” she says, “because it’s a place where you can work, it’s a place where you can live well, it’s a place where there is hope.” -Jane Jacobs (1971)
It was my birthday this week (May 2nd). But it was also the birthday of someone far more noteworthy. This past May 4th marks what would have been Jane Jacob’s 100th birthday. (She passed in Toronto in 2006.)
In commemoration of this, Toronto Life published a photographic essay, along with a short piece by Joe Berridge. Joe is a partner at the urban design and planning firm Urban Strategies. He’s also a great storyteller.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jane didn’t do nice—Toronto’s default emotional setting. She was cantankerous and argumentative: once you got on the wrong side of her, that was that. About 20 years ago, when I was working as an urban planner, we were on a panel together at Boston College. I was making some remarks about city planning she clearly thought rubbish—and she just interrupted me. “Joe, Joe, Joe,” she said (her squawky Scranton, Pennsylvania, accent made it sound like “jaw, jaw, jaw”). “You’re tacking nansense.” The audience agreed. After I spoke, an incomprehensible social science professor took the stage. Jane wasn’t fond of academics—she didn’t think they knew much—but to make matters worse, he kept addressing her as Professor Jacobs. “Staap calling me prafessa,” she barked. “I barely graduated high school.” He and I both slunk offstage in shame, clutching our notes.
“We came to Toronto,” she says, “because it’s a place where you can work, it’s a place where you can live well, it’s a place where there is hope.” -Jane Jacobs (1971)
It was my birthday this week (May 2nd). But it was also the birthday of someone far more noteworthy. This past May 4th marks what would have been Jane Jacob’s 100th birthday. (She passed in Toronto in 2006.)
In commemoration of this, Toronto Life published a photographic essay, along with a short piece by Joe Berridge. Joe is a partner at the urban design and planning firm Urban Strategies. He’s also a great storyteller.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jane didn’t do nice—Toronto’s default emotional setting. She was cantankerous and argumentative: once you got on the wrong side of her, that was that. About 20 years ago, when I was working as an urban planner, we were on a panel together at Boston College. I was making some remarks about city planning she clearly thought rubbish—and she just interrupted me. “Joe, Joe, Joe,” she said (her squawky Scranton, Pennsylvania, accent made it sound like “jaw, jaw, jaw”). “You’re tacking nansense.” The audience agreed. After I spoke, an incomprehensible social science professor took the stage. Jane wasn’t fond of academics—she didn’t think they knew much—but to make matters worse, he kept addressing her as Professor Jacobs. “Staap calling me prafessa,” she barked. “I barely graduated high school.” He and I both slunk offstage in shame, clutching our notes.
Jacobs was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Without a doubt, she left her mark on this city, as well as others, like New York. And I believe that she is part of the reason why – almost 50 years after she first moved to Toronto – we remain a city where you can work, live well, and where there is hope. I like that simple characterization.
If you’d like to read/see the full piece by Toronto Life, click here.
For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:
Jacobs was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Without a doubt, she left her mark on this city, as well as others, like New York. And I believe that she is part of the reason why – almost 50 years after she first moved to Toronto – we remain a city where you can work, live well, and where there is hope. I like that simple characterization.
If you’d like to read/see the full piece by Toronto Life, click here.
For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:
I am sure that a lot of you know where the title of this post comes from. It’s a riff on one of the most important and influential books in the world of city planning: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961).
But when Jane Jacobs first wrote this book, there was no such thing as smartphones and nobody was “checking-in” to hipster dive bars on Foursquare.
So instead of leveraging big data, her analyses and arguments were based on observation. She walked the streets of New York and Toronto and figured out what made cities thrive and what made cities die. That was her brilliance.
More specifically, they set out to test the following 4 essential conditions:
“She [Jane Jacobs] argued that, to promote urban life in large cities, the physical environment should be characterized by diversity at both the district and street level. Diversity, in turn, requires four essential conditions: (i) mixed land uses, that is, districts should serve more than two primary functions, and that would attract people who have different purposes; (ii) small blocks, which promote contact opportunities among people; (iii) buildings diverse in terms of age and form, which make it possible to mix high-rent and low-rent tenants; and (iv) sufficient dense concentration of people and buildings.”
To accomplish this, the team assembled and studied data from the following sources:
Mobile phone activity (specifically internet activity)
OpenStreetsMap Data
Census Data
Land Use Information
Infrastructure Data
Foursquare Data (Venues API)
Ultimately, they determined that Jane Jacobs knew what she was talking about. The above conditions are essential to urban vibrancy and they apply to Italian cities, just as they did and do to American cities. But this test was valuable, because the more that we can measure and quantify cities, the better I think we’ll get at creating and promoting urban vitality.
Now imagine if you overlaid the findings of their report with residential and commercial rents. I bet you’d also find that there’s a strong business case for urban vitality.
I’ve heard a number of people say that, eventually, every company will be a software/technology company. And I don’t think we’re far off from that reality. To me, this study feels like an early example of what that might look like for city building.
On a side note, the picture at the top of this post is of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I took it on a weekend trip in 2007. I was living in Dublin at the time.
The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.
As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)
What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning.
When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.
But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.
I am sure that a lot of you know where the title of this post comes from. It’s a riff on one of the most important and influential books in the world of city planning: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961).
But when Jane Jacobs first wrote this book, there was no such thing as smartphones and nobody was “checking-in” to hipster dive bars on Foursquare.
So instead of leveraging big data, her analyses and arguments were based on observation. She walked the streets of New York and Toronto and figured out what made cities thrive and what made cities die. That was her brilliance.
More specifically, they set out to test the following 4 essential conditions:
“She [Jane Jacobs] argued that, to promote urban life in large cities, the physical environment should be characterized by diversity at both the district and street level. Diversity, in turn, requires four essential conditions: (i) mixed land uses, that is, districts should serve more than two primary functions, and that would attract people who have different purposes; (ii) small blocks, which promote contact opportunities among people; (iii) buildings diverse in terms of age and form, which make it possible to mix high-rent and low-rent tenants; and (iv) sufficient dense concentration of people and buildings.”
To accomplish this, the team assembled and studied data from the following sources:
Mobile phone activity (specifically internet activity)
OpenStreetsMap Data
Census Data
Land Use Information
Infrastructure Data
Foursquare Data (Venues API)
Ultimately, they determined that Jane Jacobs knew what she was talking about. The above conditions are essential to urban vibrancy and they apply to Italian cities, just as they did and do to American cities. But this test was valuable, because the more that we can measure and quantify cities, the better I think we’ll get at creating and promoting urban vitality.
Now imagine if you overlaid the findings of their report with residential and commercial rents. I bet you’d also find that there’s a strong business case for urban vitality.
I’ve heard a number of people say that, eventually, every company will be a software/technology company. And I don’t think we’re far off from that reality. To me, this study feels like an early example of what that might look like for city building.
On a side note, the picture at the top of this post is of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I took it on a weekend trip in 2007. I was living in Dublin at the time.
The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.
As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)
What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning.
When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.
But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.
