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May 14, 2010
Stephen Goldsmith, Editor of What We See
Gothamist
by Jake Dobkin
It's been more than four years since urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs passed away, but the issues she focused on during her life seem more pressing than ever: how to build successful neighborhoods and cities, the economic survival of small business in the face of development, and the effects of mega-projects like Atlantic Yards. This month, New Village Press published "What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs"- we asked Stephen Goldsmith, one of the books editors, about Jane Jacobs' life and legacy.
...Jane Jacobs' urbanist philosophy seems to have largely been embraced by the current generation of city planners. Where do you think her ideas have had the greatest physical impact here in New York? One way to observe how her ideas are having the greatest impact, and there are many examples to be sure, are in projects such as Majora Carter's efforts with Sustainable South Bronx , and Alexie Torres-Flemming's work with Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. One might even make the case that the High Line project is an outgrowth of her sensibilities.
Consider the reclamation of these abandoned, neglected places and the new life they have, the way these places have learned to become something new. Jacobs ideas have catalyzed ways of thinking about preservation, about integrated uses that even manifest themselves in such things as local manufacturers capturing downstream waste for new materials, such as Ice Stone in Brooklyn. The integrated way she viewed cities, economies, ecologies and people encourages creative responses to complex problems.
In fact, her ideas seem so dominant that only very rich or foolhardy developers would try to get a Robert Moses scale project done in the city now. Do you think we've lost anything because of that, like the ability to design and build large, necessary projects? Books like The Battle for Gotham by Roberta Brandes-Gratz and Tony Flint's Wrestling With Moses have addressed these questions in ways that are stirring public debate about this once again. Large scale projects such as transit infrastructure aside, what we see today are developers who like to fake authenticity at a large scale, who appropriate front porches or mixed-use development as though these ingredients will salvage bad ideas. The ability to design and build large scale projects such as Atlantic Yards has not been stopped, and as as result the people of Brooklyn will have do endure still-unknown consequences of these poor choices.
...If Jane Jacobs was alive today, what issues do you think she'd be working on? What fights would she be fighting? We know from conversations we had with her that she was very concerned about how we can support the the businesses of immigrant communities long-term, making sure that their efforts to support themselves did not ultimately lead to the gentrification of their neighborhoods and force them out. This was happening in Toronto and we know it is occurring elsewhere, so this was an issue of concern that she would have continued to work on with us.
As for fighting, it is easy to imagine her raising hell about the fate of Atlantic Yards for many reasons, and about wholesale proposals for what she referred to as cataclysmic changes in any community, especially places that suffer like New Orleans.
Illustration by Robert Cowan
Posted by eric at May 14, 2010 11:14 AM