The

DEATH
and LIFE of
GREAT
AMERICAN
CITIES
Jane Jacobs

VINTAGE BOOKS

A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

NEW YORK
 VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1992

Copyright~ /96/ byjanejacohs

Copyright renewed /989 by Jane Jacobs To NEW YORK CITY

:\11 rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

where I came to seek my fortune
Conventions. Published in the L'nited States by Vintage Books, a di\'ision of and found it by finding
Random House, Inc., ;\Jew York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random Bob, Jimmy, Ned and Mary
House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by
for whom this book is written too
Random House, Inc., ;\Jew York, in 1961 .

.\cknowledgment is made to the following publications for permission to

reprint portions of this book which first appeared in their pages: Architectural
Forum, the Columbia University Forum, Harper's Magazine, The Reporter.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jacobs, Jane, 1916-
The death and life of great American cities I Jane Jacobs.- 1st Vintage Books ed.
p. em.
Originally published: ;\Jew York: Random House, [1961].
Includes index.
ISBN 0-679-74195-X
I. City planning-Cnited States. 2. L'rban renewal-L'nited Stares.
3. Crban policy-l!nited States. I. Title.
HTI67.J33 1992
307.76'0973-dc20 92-50082
CIP
Manufactured in the L'nited States of America
9C
 Acknowledgment

So many scores of persons helped me with this book, wittingly

and unwittingly, that I shall never fully be able to acknowledge
the appreciation I owe and feel. In panicular I am grateful for
information, aid or criticism given by the following persons:
Saul Alinsky, Norris C. Andrews, Edmund Bacon, June Blythe,
John Decker Butzner, Jr., Henry Churchill, Grady Clay, William
C. Crow, Vernon De Mars, Monsignor John J. Egan, Charles
Farnsley, Carl Feiss, Roben B. Filley, Mrs. Rosario Folino, Chad-
bourne Gilpatric, Victor Gruen, Frank Havey, Goldie Hoffman,
Frank Hotchkiss, Leticia Kent, William H. Kirk, Mr. and Mrs.
George Kostritsky, Jay Landesman, The Rev. Wilbur C. Leach,
Glennie M. Lenear, Melvin F. Levine, Edward Logue, Ellea
Lurie, Elizabeth Manson, Roger Montgomery, Richard Nelson,
Joseph Passonneau, Ellen Perry, Rose Poner, Ansel Robisoa,
James W. Rouse, Samuel A. Spiegel, Stanley B. Tankel, Jack Volk-
man, Roben C. Weinberg, Erik Wensberg, Henry Whitney,
William H. Whyte, Jr., William Wilcox, Mildred Zucker, Beda
Zwicker. None of these people is, of course, responsible for what
I have written; indeed, some disagree heartily with my point of
view but have helped me generously nevertheless.
I am grateful also to the Rockefeller Foundation for the
financial support which made my research and writing possible,
to the New School for Social Research for its hospitality, and
to Douglas Haskell, the Editor of Architectural Forum, for his
encouragement and forbearance. Most of all I am grateful to my
husband, Robert H. Jacobs, Jr.; by this time I do not know which
ideas in this book are mine and which are his.
JANE JACOBS

Contents

1 Introduction, 3

Part One THE PECULIAR NATURE OF CITIES

2 The uses of sidewalks: safety, 29

3 The uses of sidewalks: contact, ss
4 The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children, 74
5 The uses of neighborhood parks, 89
6 The uses of city neighborhoods, 1 12

Part Two THE CONDITIONS FOR CITY DIVERSITY

7 The generators of diversity, 143

8 The need for primary mixed uses, 151
 9 The need for small blocks, I78
10 The need for aged buildings, I 87
11 The need for concentration, 200
12 Some myths about diversity, 222

PIU't Three FORCES OF DECLINE AND REGENERATION

13 The self-destruction of diversity, 24I

14 The curse of border vacuums, 2 57
15 Unslumming and slumming, 270
16 Gradual money and cataclysmic money, 29I

PIU't Four DIFFERENT TACTICS

Illustrations
17 Subsidizing dwellings, 32 I
18 Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, 338
19 Visual order: its limitations and possibilities, 371
20 Salvaging projects, 392
21 Governing and planning districts, 405
22 The kind of problem a city is, 428

The scenes that illustrate this book are all about us. For illustra-
Index, 449 tions, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you
might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.
"Until lately the best thing that I was able to
think of in favor of civilization, apart from
blind acceptance of the order of the universe,
was that it made possible the artist, the poet,
the philosopher, and the man of science. But I
think that is not the greatest thing. N O'W I
believe that the greatest thing is a matter that
comes directly home to us all. When it is
said that we are too much occupied with the means
of living to live, I answer that the chief worth
of civilization is just that it makes the means
of living more complex; that it calls for great
and combined intellectual efforts, instead of
1
Introduction
simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the
crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved
from place to place. Because more complex and
intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and
richer life. They mean more life. Life is an This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It
end in itself, and the only question as to is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city
planning and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those
whether it is worth living is whether you have now taught in everything from schools of architecture and plan-
enough of it. ning to the Sunday supplements and women's magazines. My at-
"I will add but a word. We are all very near tack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods or hair-
splitting about fashions in design. It is an attack, rather, on the
despair. The sheathing that floats us over its
principles and aims that have shaped modern, orthodox city plan-
waves is compounded of hope, faith in the ning and rebuilding.
unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort, In setting forth different principles, I shall mainly be writing
and the deep, sub-conscious content which comes about common, ordinary things: for instance, what kinds of city
streets are safe and what kinds are not; why some city parks are
from the exercise of our powers." marvelous and others are vice traps and death traps; why some
slums stay slums and other slums regenerate themselves even
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR
against financial and official opposition; what makes downtowns
shift their centers; what, if anything, is a city neighborhood, and
4] INTRODUCTION Introduction [ s
what jobs, if any, neighborhoods in great cities do. In short, I That such wonders may be accomplished, people who get
shall be writing about how cities work in real life, because this is marked with the planners' hex signs are pushed about, expropri-
the only way to learn what principles of planning and what prac- ated, and uprooted much as if they were the subjects of a con-
tices in rebuilding can promote social and economic vitality in quering power. Thousands upon thousands of small businesses are
cities, and what practices and principles will deaden these attri- destroyed, and their proprietors ruined, with hardly a gesture at
butes. compensation. Whole communities are torn apart and sown to the
There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to winds, with a reaping of cynicism, resentment and despair that
spend-the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars-we must be heard and seen to be believed. A group of clergymen in
could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the Chicago, appalled at the fruits of planned city rebuilding there,
great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday's and day-before-yes- 1asked,
terday's suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wan-
dering tax money, and perhaps even solve the traffic problem. Could Job have been thinking of Chicago when he wrote:
But look what we have built with the first several billions:
Here are men that alter their neighbor's landmark
Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, shoulder the poor aside, conspire to oppress the friendless.
vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they
were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which Reap they the field that is none of theirs, strip they the vine-
are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any yard wrongfully seized from its owner . . .
buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that A cry goes up from the city streets, where wounded men lie
mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural groaning ..•
centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers
that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices If so, he was also thinking of New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lack- Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco and a number of other
luster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. places. The economic rationale of current city rebuilding is a
Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no prom- hoax. The economics of city rebuilding do not rest soundly on
enaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the reasoned investment of public tax subsidies, as urban renewal
rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities. theory proclaims, but also on vast, involuntary subsidies wrung
Under the surface, these accomplishments prove even poorer out of helpless site victims. And the increased tax returnS from
than their poor pretenses. They seldom aid the city areas around such sites, accruing to the cities as a result of this "investment,"
them, as in theory they are supposed to. These amputated areas are a mirage, a pitiful gesture against the ever increasing sums of
typically develop galloping gangrene. To house people in this public money needed to combat disintegration and instability that
planned fashion, price tags are fastened on the population, and flow from the cruelly shaken-up city. The means to planned city
each sorted-out chunk of price-tagged populace lives in growing rebuilding are as deplorable as the ends.
suspicion and tension against the surrounding city. When two or Meantime, all the art and science of city planning are helpless to
more such hostile islands are juxtaposed the result is called stem decay-and the spiridessness that precedes decay-in ever
"a balanced neighborhood." Monopolistic shopping centers and more massive swatches of cities. Nor can this decay be laid, reas-
monumental cultural centers cloak, under the public relations suringly, to lack of opportunity to apply the arts of plannin~. It
hoohaw, the subtraction of commerce, and of culture too, from seems to matter little whether they are applied or not. Co~lSlder
the intimate and casual life of cities. the Morningside Heights area in New York City. According to
6] INTRODUCTION Introduction [ 7

planning theory it should not be in trouble at all, for it enjoys a and countryside alike to a monotonous, unnourishing gruel, this is
great abundance of parkland, campus, playground and other not strange. It all comes, first-, second-, third- or fourth-hand, out
open spaces. It has plenty of grass. It occupies high and pleasant of the same intellectual dish of mush, a mush in which the quali-
ground with magnificent river views. It is a famous educational ties, necessities, advantages and behavior of great cities have been
center with splendid institutions--Columbia University, Union utterly confused with the qualities, necessities, advantages and
Theological Seminary, the Juilliard School of Music, and half a behavior of other and more inert types of settlements.
dozen others of eminent respectability. It is the beneficiary of There is nothing econOinically or socially inevitable about ei-
good hospitals and churches. It has no industries. Its streets are ther the decay of old cities or the fresh-minted decadence of the
zoned in the main against "incompatible uses" intruding into the new unurban urbanization. On the contrary, no other aspect of
preserves for solidly constructed, roomy, middle- and upper-class our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated
apartments. Yet by the early 195o's Morningside Heights was for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are
becoming a slum so swiftly, the surly kind of slum in which peo- getting. Extraordinary governmental financial incentives have
ple fear to walk the streets, that the situation posed a crisis for the been required to achieve this degree of monotony, sterility and
institutions. They and the planning arms of the city government vulgarity. Decades of preaching, writing and exhorting by experts
got together, applied more planning theory, wiped out the most have gone into convincing us and our legislators that mush like
run-down part of the area and built in its stead a middle-income this must be good for us, as long as it comes bedded with grass.
cooperative project complete with shopping center, and a public Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains re-
housing project, all interspersed with air, light, sunshine and sponsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities
landscaping. This was hailed as a great demonstration in city sav- of city planning. But the destructive effects of automobiles are
mg. much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city
After that, Morningside Heights went downhill even faster. building. Of course planners, including the highwaymen with
Nor is this an unfair or irrelevant example. In city after city, fabulous sums of money and enormous powers at their disposal,
precisely the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are de- are at a loss to make automobiles and cities compatible with one
caying. Less noticed, but equally significant, in city after city another. They do not know what to do with automobiles in cities
the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are refusing to because they do not know how to plan for workable and vital
decay. cities anyhow-with or without automobiles.
Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood
success, in city building and city design. This is the laboratory in and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing num-
which city planning should have been learning and forming and ber of planners and designers have come to believe that if they
testing its theories. Instead the practitioners and teachers of this can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have
discipline (if such it can be called) have ignored the study of suc- solved the major problem of cities. Cities have much more intri-
cess and failure in real life, have been incurious about the reasons cate economic and social concerns than automobile traffic. How
for unexpected success, and are guided instead by principles de- can you know what to try with traffic until you know how the
rived from the behavior and appearance of towns, suburbs, tuber- city itself works, and what else it needs to do with its streets?
culosis sanatoria, fairs, and imaginary dream cities--from anything You can't.
but cities themselves.
If it appears that the rebuilt portions of cities and the endless It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we
new developments spreading beyond the cities are reducing city no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick,
8) INTRODUCTION Introduction [ 9

easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our planning and architectural students, who now and again pursue,
cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think under the guidance of their teachers, the paper exercise of con-
this is so. verting it into super-blocks and park promenades, wiping away
Specifically, in the case of planning for cities, it is clear that its nonconforming uses, transforming it to an ideal of order and
a large number of good and earnest people do care deeply about gentility so simple it could be engraved on the head of a pin.
building and renewing. Despite some corruption, and considerable Twenty years ago, when I first happened to see the North
greed for the other man's vineyard, the intentions going into the End, its buildings-town houses of different kinds and sizes con-
messes we make are, on the whole, exemplary. Planners, architects verted to flats, and four- or five-story tenements built to house
of city design, and those they have led along with them in their the flood of immigrants first from Ireland, then from Eastern Eu-
beliefs are not consciously disdainful of the importance of know- rope and finally from Sicily-were badly overcrowded, and the
ing how things work. On the contrary, they have gone to great general effect was of a district taking a terrible physical beating
pains to learn what the saints and sages of modern orthodox plan- and certainly desperately poor.
ning have said about how cities ought to work and what ought to When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the
be good for people and businesses in them. They take this with change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated.
such devotion that when contradictory reality intrudes, threaten- Instead of mattresses against the windows there were V enerian
ing to shatter their dearly won learning, they must shrug reality blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted
aside. houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the
Consider, for example, the orthodox planning reaction to a dis- old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements
trict called the North End in Boston. • This is an old, low-rent (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by
area merging into the heavy industry of the waterfront, and it is throwing two oJder apartments together, and had equipped these
officially considered Boston's worst slum and civic shame. It em- with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a nar-
bodies attributes which all enlightened people know are evil be- row alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North
cause so many wise men have said they are evil. Not only is the End, but no: more neatly repointed brickwork, new blinds, and a
North End bumped right up against industry, but worse still it burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city
has all kinds of working places and commerce mingled in the district I had ever seen-or have seen to this day-in which the
greatest complexity with its residences. It has the highest concen- sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and
tration of dwelling units, on the land that is used for dwelling amputated, but repaired and painted as neatly as if they were in-
units, of any part of Boston, and indeed one of the highest con- tended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for living were
centrations to be found in any American city. It has little park- an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such en-
land. Children play in the streets. Instead of super-blocks, or terprises as upholstery making, metal working, carpentry, food
even decently large blocks, it has very small blocks; in planning processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people
parlance it is "badly cut up with wasteful streets." Its buildings shopping, people strolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold
are old. Everything conceivable is presumably wrong with the January day, there would surely have been people sitting.
North End. In orthodox planning terms, it is a three-dimensional The general street atmosphere of buoyancy, friendliness and
textbook of "megalopolis" in the last stages of depravity. The good health was so infectious that I began asking directions of
North End is thus a recurring assignment for M.I.T. and Harvard people just for the fun of getting in on some talk. I had seen a
• Please remember the North End. I shall refer to it frequently in this lot of Boston in the past couple of days, most of it sorely distress-
book. ing, and this struck me, with relief, as the healthiest place in the
10) INTRODUCTION Introduction [ 11

city. But I could not imagine where the money had come from good for people and good for city neighborhoods, everything that
for the rehabilitation, because it is almost impossible today to get made him an expert, told him the North End had to be a bad
any appreciable mongage money in districtS of American cities place.
that are not either high-rent, or else imitations of suburbs. To find The leading Boston savings banker, "a man 'way up there in
out, I went into a bar and restaurant (where an animated conver- the power structure," to whom my friend referred me for my
sation about fishing was in progress) and called a Boston planner inquiry about the money, confirmed what I learned, in the mean-
I know. time, from people in the North End. The money had not come
"Why in the world are you down in the Nonh End?" he said. through the grace of the great American banking system, which
"Money? Why, no money or work has gone into the North End. now knows enough about planning to know a slum as well as the
Nothing's going on down there. Eventually, yes, but not yet. planners do. "No sense in lending money into the North End,"
That's a slum!" the banker said. "It's a slum! It's still getting some immigrants!
"It doesn't seem like a slum to me," I said. Funhermore, back in the Depression it had a very large number
"Why, that's the worst slum in the city. It has two hundred and of foreclosures; bad record." (I had heard about this too, in the
seventy-five dwelling units to the net acre! I hate to admit we meantime, and how families had worked and pooled their re-
have anything like that in Boston, but it's a fact." sources to buy back some of those foreclosed buildings.)
"Do you have any other figures on it?" I asked. The largest mortgage loans that had been fed into this district
"Yes, funny thing. It has among the lowest delinquency, disease of some I 5,ooo people in the quaner-century since the Great
and infant mortality rates in the city. It also has the lowest ratio Depression were for $3,ooo, the banker told me, "and very, very
of rent to income in the city. Boy, are those people getting bar- few of those." There had been some others for $I,ooo and for
gains. Let's see . . . the child population is just about average for h,ooo. The rehabilitation work had been almost entirely financed
the city, on the nose. The death rate is low, 8.8 per thousand, by business and housing earnings within the district, plowed back
against the average city rate of 1 1.2. The TB death rate is very in, and by skilled work bartered among residents and relatives of
low, less than I per ten thousand, can't understand it, it's lower residents.
even than Brookline's. In the old days the Nonh End used to be By this time I knew that this inability to borrow for improve-
the city's worst spot for tuberculosis, but all that has changed. ment was a galling worry to North Enders, and that funhermore
Well, they must be strong people. Of course it's a terrible slum." some North Enders were worried because it seemed impossible to
"You should have more slums like this," I said. "Don't tell me get new building in the area except at the price of seeing them-
there are plans to wipe this out. You ought to be down here selves and their community wiped out in the fashion of the stu-
learning as much as you can from it." dents' dreams of a city Eden, a fate which they knew was
"I know how you feel," he said. "I often go down there myself not academic because it had already smashed completely a so-
just to walk around the streets and feel that wonderful, cheerful cially similar-although physically more spacious-nearby district
street life. Say, what you ought to do, you ought to come back called the West End. They were worried because they were
and go down in the summer if you think it's fun now. You'd be aware also that patch and fix with nothing else could not do for-
crazy about it in summer. But of course we have to rebuild it ever. "Any chance of loans for new construction in the North
eventually. We've got to get those people off the streets." End?" I asked the banker.
Here was a curious thing. My friend's instincts told him the "No, absolutely not!" he said, sounding impatient at my dense-
North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. ness. "That's a slum!"
But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what is Bankers, like planners, have theories about cities on which they
11 j INTilODUCTION Introduction [ 13

act. They have gotten their theories from the same intellectual censured a physician, William Turner, who had the temerity to
sources as the planners. Bankers and government administrative write a pamphlet criticizing Dr. Rush's doctrines and calling "the
officials who guarantee mortgages do not invent planning theories practice of taking blood in diseases contrary to common sense, to
nor, surprisingly, even economic doctrine about cities. They are general experience, to enlightened reason and to the manifest laws
enlightened nowadays, and they pick up their ideas from idealists, of the divine Providence." Sick people needed fortifying, not
a generation late. Since theoretical city planning has embraced no draining, said Dr. Turner, and he was squelched.
major new ideas for considerably more than a generation, theo- Medical analogies, applied to social organisms, are apt to be far-
retical planners, financers and bureaucrats are all just about even fetched, and there is no point in mistaking mammalian chemistry
today. for what occurs in a city. But analogies as to what goes on in the
And to put it blundy, they are all in the same stage of elabo- brains of earnest and learned men, dealing with complex phenom-
rately learned superstition as medical science was early in the last ena they do not understand at all and trying to make do with a
century, when physicians put their faith in bloodletting, to draw pseudoscience, do have point. As in the pseudoscience of blood-
out the evil humors which were believed to cause disease. With letting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and plan-
bloodletting, it took years of learning to know precisely which ning, years of learning and a plethora of subde and complicated
veins, by what rituals, were to be opened for what symptoms. A dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. The tools of
superstructure of technical complication was erected in such dead- technique have steadily been perfected. Naturally, in time, force-
pan detail that the literature still sounds almost plausible. How- ful and able men, admired administrators, having swallowed the
ever, because people, even when they are thoroughly enmeshed initial fallacies and having been provisioned with tools and with
in descriptions of reality which are at variance with reality, are public confidence, go on logically to the greatest destructive ex-
still seldom devoid of the powers of observation and independent cesses, which prudence or mercy might previously have forbade.
thought, the science of bloodletting, over most of its long sway, Bloodletting could heal only by accident or insofar as it broke the
appears usually to have been tempered with a certain amount of rules, until the time when it was abandoned in favor of the hard,
common sense. Or it was tempered until it reached its highest complex business of assembling, using and testing, bit by bit, true
peaks of technique in, of all places, the young United States. descriptions of reality drawn not from how it ought to be, but
Bloodletting went wild here. It had an enormously influential from how it is. The pseudoscience of city planning and its com-
proponent in Dr. Benjamin Rush, still revered as the greatest panion, the art of city design, have not yet broken with the spe-
statesman-physician of our revolutionary and federal periods, and cious comfort of wishes, familiar superstitions, oversimplifications,
a genius of medical administration. Dr. Rush Got Things Done. and symbols, and have not yet embarked upon the adventure of
Among the things he got done, some of them good and useful, probing the real world.
were to develop, practice, teach and spread the custom of blood-
letting in cases where prudence or mercy had heretofore re- So in this book we shall start, if only in a small way, adventur-
strained its use. He and his students drained the blood of very ing in the real world, ourselves. The way to get at what goes on
young children, of consumptives, of the gready aged, of almost in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is, I
anyone unfortunate enough to be sick in his realms of influence. think, to look closely, and with as little previous expectation as is
His extreme practices aroused the alarm and horror of European possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to
bloodletting physicians. And yet as late as I 85 I, a committee ap- see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge
pointed by the State Legislature of New York solemnly defended among them. This is what I try to do in the first part of this
the thoroughgoing use of bloodletting. It scathingly ridiculed and book.
14] INTRODUCTION Introduction [ 1 s
One principle emerges so ubiquitously, and in so many and such as a primary purpose or as the main drama is apt to make nothing
complex different forms, that I turn my attention to its nature in but trouble.
the second part of this book, a part which becomes the heart of In New York's East Harlem there is a housing project with a
my argument. This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a conspicuous rectangular lawn which became an object of hatred
most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each to the project tenants. A social worker frequently at the project
other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. was astonished by how often the subject of the lawn came up,
The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they usually gratuitously as far as she could see, and how much the
must supplement each other in certain concrete ways. tenants despised it and urged that it be done away with. When she
I think that unsuccessful city areas are areas which lack this asked why, the usual answer was, "What good is it?" or "Who
kind of intricate mutual support, and that the science of city plan- wants it?" Finally one day a tenant more aniculate than the others
ning and the art of city design, in real life for real cities, must made this pronouncement: "Nobody cared what we wanted
become the science and art of catalyzing and nourishing these when they built this place. They threw our houses down and
close-grained working relationships. I think, from the evidence I pushed us here and pushed our friends somewhere else. We don't
can find, that there are four primary conditions required for gen- have a place around here to get a cup of coffee or a newspaper
erating useful great city diversity, and that by deliberately induc- even, or borrow fifty cents. Nobody cared what we need. But
ing these four conditions, planning can induce city vitality (some- the big men come and look at that grass and say, 'Isn't it wonder-
thing that the plans of planners alone, and the designs of designers ful! Now the poor have everything!'"
alone, can never achieve). While Pan I is principally about the This tenant was saying what moralists have said for thousands
social behavior of people in cities, and is necessary for understand- of years: Handsome is as handsome does. All that glitters is not
ing what follows, Pan II is principally about the economic be- gold.
havior of cities and is the most imponant pan of this book. She was saying more: There is a quality even meaner than out-
Cities are fantastically dynamic places, and this is strikingly true right ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest
of their successful parts, which offer a fertile ground for the plans mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the
of thousands of people. In the third pan of this book, I examine real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
some aspects of decay and regeneration, in the light of how cities In trying to explain the underlying order of cities, I use a pre-
are used, and how they and their people behave, in real life. ponderance of examples from New York because that is where I
The last part of the book suggests changes in housing, traffic, live. But most of the basic ideas in this book come from things I
design, planning and administrative practices, and discusses, first noticed or was told in other cities. For example, my first ink-
finally, the kind of problem which cities pose-a problem in han- ling about the powerful effects of certain kinds of functional mix-
dling organized complexity. tures in the city came from Pittsburgh, my first speculations about
The look of things and the way they work are inextricably street safety from Philadelphia and Baltimore, my first notions
bound together, and in no place more so than cities. But people about the meanderings of downtown from Boston, my first clues
who are interested only in how a city "ought" to look and un- to the unmaking of slums from Chicago. Most of the material for
interested in how it works will be disappointed by this book. It is these musings was at my own front door, but perhaps it is easiest
futile to plan a city's appearance, or speculate on how to endow it to see things first where you don't take them for granted. The
with a pleasing appearance of order, without knowing what son basic idea, to try to begin understanding the intricate social and
of innate, functioning order it has. To seek for the look of things economic order under the seeming disorder of cities, was not my
16) INT:RODUCTION Introduction [ I?

idea at all, but that of William Kirk, head worker of Union Settle- and how little they are to the point, I shall give a quick outline
ment in East Harlem, New York, who, by showing me East Har- here of the most influential ideas that have contributed to the
lem, showed me a way of seeing other neighborhoods, and down- verities of onhodox modern city planning and city architectural
towns too. In every case, I have tried to test out what I saw or design.•
heard in one city or neighborhood against others, to find how The most imponant thread of influence starts, more or less,
relevant each city's or each place's lessons might be outside its with Ebenezer Howard, an English court reporter for whom
own special case. planning was an avocation. Howard looked at the living condi-
I have concentrated on great cities, and on their inner areas, tions of the poor in late-nineteenth-century London, and justifiably
because this is the problem that has been most consistently evaded did not like what he smelled or saw or heard. He not only hated
in planning theory. I think this may also have somewhat wider the wrongs and mistakes of the city, he hated the city and thought
usefulness as time passes, because many of the parts of today's it an outright evil and an affront to nature that so many people
cities in the worst, and apparently most baffiing, trouble were should get themselves into an agglomeration. His prescription for
suburbs or dignified, quiet residential areas not too long ago; saving the people was to do the city in.
eventually many of today's brand-new suburbs or semisuburbs The program he proposed, in 1898, was to halt the growth of
are going to be engulfed in cities and will succeed or fail in that London and also repopulate the countryside, where villages were
condition depending on whether they can adapt to functioning declining, by building a new kind of town-the Garden City,
successfully as city districts. Also, to be frank, I like dense cities where the city poor might again live close to nature. So they
best and care about them most. might earn their livings, industry was to be set up in the Garden
But I hope no reader will try to transfer my observations into City, for while Howard was not planning cities, he was not plan-
guides as to what goes on in towns, or little cities, or in suburbs ning dormitory suburbs either. His aim was the creation of self-
which still are suburban. Towns, suburbs and even little cities sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you were docile
are totally different organisms from great cities. We are in enough and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your
trouble already from trying to understand big cities in terms of life among others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias,
the behavior, and the imagined behavior, of towns. To try to the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the
understand towns in terms of big cities will only compound con- planners in charge. The Garden City was to be encircled with a
fusion. belt of agriculture. Industry was to be in its planned preserves;
I hope any reader of this book will constantly and skeptically schools, housing and greens in planned living preserves; and in the
test what I say against his own knowledge of cities and their be- center were to be commercial, club and cultural places, held in
havior. If I have been inaccurate in observations or mistaken in
inferences and conclusions, I hope these faults will be quickly cor- • Readers who would like a fuller account, and a sympathetic account
rected. The point is, we need desperately to learn and to apply as which mine is not, should go to the sources, which are very interesting,
much knowledge that is true and useful about cities as fast as especially: Garden Cities of Tomorrow, by Ebenezer Howard; The Cul-
ture of Cities, by Lewis Mumford; Cities in Evolution, by Sir Patrick
possible. Geddes; Modern Housing, by Catherine Bauer; Toward New Towns f~r
America, by Clarence Stein; Nothing Gained by Overcrowding, by SI.I'
I have been making unkind remarks about onhodox city plan- Raymond Unwin; and Tbe City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, by Le
ning theory, and shall make more as occasion arises to do so. By Corbusier. The best short survey I know of is the group of excerpts under
now, these orthodox ideas are part of our folklore. They harm us the title "Assumptions and Goals of City Planning," contained in Land-
Use Planning, A Casebook on tbe Use, Misuse and Re-use of Urban Land,
because we take them for granted. To show how we got them, by Charles M. Haar.
18] INTII.ODUCTION
Introduction [ 19

common. The town and green belt, in their totality, were to be some housing ~ te~ .only of subu~ban physical qualities and
permanently controlled by the public authority under which the small-town social qualines. He conceiVed of commerce in terms
town was developed, to prevent speculation or supposedly irra- ~f ~outine, standardized supply of goods, and as serving a self-
tional changes in land use and also to do away with temptations to limi.ted m~ket. He conceived of good planning as a series of
increase its density-in brief, to prevent it from ever becoming a stanc acts; m each case the plan must anticipate all that is needed
city. The maximum population was to be held to thirty thousand and be protected, after it is built, against any but the most minor
people. subsequ~n~ ch~nges. He co~cei~ed of planning also as essentially
Nathan Glazer has summed up the vision well in Architectural paternahsnc, if not authontarian. He was uninterested in the
Forum: "The image was the English country town-with the aspects of the city which could not be abstracted to serve his
manor house and its park replaced by a community center, and Utopia. In parti~ar, he simply wro~e off the intricate, many-
with some factories hidden behind a screen of trees, to supply faceted, cultural life of the metropolis. He was uninterested in
work." such pr?blems as the way great cities police themselves, or ex-
The closest American equivalent would probably be the model change Ideas, or operate politically, or invent new economic ar-
company town, with profit-sharing, and with the Parent-Teacher rangements! and he was oblivious to devising ways to strengthen
Associations in charge of the routine, custodial political life. For these funcnons because, after all, he was not designing for this
Howard was envisioning not simply a new physical environment kind of life in any case.
and social life, but a paternalistic political and economic society. Both in his preoccupations and in his omissions, Howard made
Nevertheless, as Glazer has pointed out, the Garden City was ~nse in his own term~ but none in terms of city planning. Yet
"conceived as an alternative to the city, and as a solution to city viitually all modern city planning has been adapted from, and
problems; this was, and is still, the foundation of its immense embroidered on, this silly substance.
power as a planning idea." Howard managed to get two garden H~ward's influen.ce o?' American city planning converged on
cities built, Letchworth and W elwyn, and of course England and the City from two drrections: from town and regional planners on
Sweden have, since the Second World War, built a number of the one ?and, .and fr.om architects on the other. Along the avenue
satellite towns based on Garden City principles. In the United of plannmg, Srr Pamck Geddes, a Scots biologist and philosopher,
States, the suburb of Radburn, N.J., and the depression-built, gov- sa~ the Garden City idea not as a fortuitous way to absorb popu-
ernment-sponsored Green Belt towns (actually suburbs) were all ~anon ~owth otherwise destined for a great city, but as the start-
incomplete modifications on the idea. But Howard's influence in mg pomt of a much grander and more encompassing pattern. He
the literal, or reasonably literal, acceptance of his program was as tho~ght of the pla~ning of cities in terms of the planning of whole
nothing compared to his influence on conceptions underlying all r~gt~ns. Under regiOnal planning, garden cities would be rationally
American city planning today. City planners and designers with dismbuted throughout large territories, dovetailing into natural
no interest in the Garden City, as such, are still thoroughly gov· resources, balanced against agriculture and woodland, forming
erned intellectually by its underlying principles. one far-flung logical whole.
Howard set spinning powerful and city-destroying ideas: He Howard's and Geddes' ideas were enthusiastically adopted in
conceived that the way to deal with the city's functions was to America during the 191o's, and developed further by a group
sort and sift out of the whole certain simple uses, and to arrange of e~traordinarily effective and dedicated people-among them
each of these in relative self-containment. He focused on the pro- LeWIS Mumford, Clarence Stein, the late Henry Wright, and
vision of wholesome housing as the central problem, to which Catherine Bauer. While they thought of themselves as regional
everything else was subsidiary; furthermore he defined whole- planners, Catherine Bauer has more recently called this group the
lO] INTRODUCTION
Introduction [ 11

"Decentrists," and this name is more apt, for the primary result of a monstrosity, a tyranny, a living death. It must go. New York's
regional planning, as they saw it, would be to decentralize great midtown was "solidified chaos" (Mumford). The shape and
cities, thin them out, and disperse their enterprises and populations appearance of cities was nothing but "a chaotic accident . . .
into smaller, separated cities or, better yet, towns. At the time, it the summation of the haphazard, antagonistic whims of many
appeared that the American population was both aging and level- self-centered, ill-advised individuals" (Stein). The centers of cities
ing off in numbers, and the problem appeared to be not one of amounted to "a foreground of noise, dirt, beggars, souvenirs
accommodating a rapidly growing population, but simply of re- and shrill competitive advertising" (Bauer).
distributing a static population. How could anything so bad be worth the attempt to under-
As with Howard himself, this group's influence was less in get- stand it? The Decentrists' analyses, the architectural and housing
ting literal acceptance of its program-that got nowhere-than in designs which were companions and offshoots of these analyses,
influencing city planning and legislation affecting housing and the national housing and home financing legislation so directly
housing finance. Model housing schemes by Stein and Wright, influenced by the new vision-none of these had anything to do
built mainly in suburban settings or at the fringes of cities, to- with understanding cities, or fostering successful large cities, nor
gether with the writings and the diagrams, sketches and photo- were they intended to. They were reasons and means for jetti-
graphs presented by Mumford and Bauer, demonstrated and soning cities, and the Decentrists were frank about this.
popularized ideas such as these, which are now taken for granted But in the schools of planning and architecture, and in Congress,
in orthodox planning: The street is bad as an environment for state legislatures and city halls too, the Decentrists' ideas were
humans; houses should be turned away from it and faced inward, gradually accepted as basic guides for dealing constructively
toward sheltered greens. Frequent streets are wasteful, of advan- with big cities themselves. This is the most amazing event iR. the
tage only to real estate speculators who measure value by the whole sorry tale: that finally people who sincerely wanted to
front foot. The basic unit of city design is not the street, but the strengthen great cities should adopt recipes frankly devised for
block and more particularly the super-block. Commerce should be undermining their economies and killing them.
segregated from residences and greens. A neighborhood's demand The man with the most dramatic idea of how to get all this
for goods should be calculated "scientifically," and this much and anti-city planning right into the citadels of iniquity themselves
no more commercial space allocated. The presence of many other was the European architect Le Corbusier. He devised in the
people is, at best, a necessary evil, and good city planning must 192o's a dream city which he called the Radiant City, composed
aim for at least an illusion of isolation and suburbany privacy. not of the low buildings beloved of the Decentrists, but instead
The Decentrists also pounded in Howard's premises that the ~y of skyscrapers within a park. "Suppose we are entering the
planned community must be islanded off as a self-contained unit, Clty by way of the Great Park," Le Corbusier wrote. "Our fast
that it must resist future change, and that every significant detail car takes the special elevated motor track between the majestic
must be controlled by the planners from the start and then stuck skyscrapers: as we approach nearer, there is seen the repetition
to. In short, good planning was project planning. against the sky of the twenty-four skyscrapers; to our left and
To reinforce and dramatize the necessity for the new order of right on the outskirts of each particular area are the municipal
things, the Decentrists hammered away at the bad old city. They and administrative buildings; and enclosing the space are the mu-
were incurious about successes in great cities. They were inter- seums and university buildings. The whole city is a Park." In
ested only in failures. All was failure. A book like Mumford's Le Corbusier's vertical city the common run of mankind was to
The Culture of Cities was largely a morbid and biased catalog of be housed at 1,.2oo inhabitants to the acre, a fantastically high
ills. The great city was Megalopolis, Tyrannopolis, Nekropolis, city density indeed, but because of building up so high, 95 percent
%2 ] INTRODUCTION Introduction [ 13

of the ground could remain open. The skyscrapers would occupy trists' cries of institutionalization, mechanization, depersonaliza-
only 5 percent of the ground. The high-income people would tion seemed to others foolishly sectarian.
be in lower, luxury housing around courts, with 85 percent of Le Corbusier's dream city has had an immense impact on our
their ground left open. Here and there would be restaurants and cities. It was hailed deliriously by architects, and has gradually
theaters. been embodied in scores of projects, ranging from low-income
Le Corbusier was planning not only a physical environment. public housing to office building projects. Aside from making at
He was planning for a social Utopia too. Le Corbusier's Utopia least the superficial Garden City principles superficially practi-
was a condition of what he called maximum individual liberty, cable in dense city, Le Corbusier's dream contained other marvels.
by which he seems to have meant not liberty to do anything He attempted to make planning for the automobile an integral
much, but liberty from ordinary responsibility. In his Radiant City pan of his scheme, and this was, in the 1920's and early 193o's, a
nobody, presumably, was going to have to be his brother's keeper new, exciting idea. He included great arterial roads for express
any more. Nobody was going to have to struggle with plans of one-way traffic. He cut the number of streets because "cross-roads
his own. Nobody was going to be tied down. are an enemy to traffic.'' He proposed underground streets for
The Decentrists and other loyal advocates of the Garden City heavy vehicles and deliveries, and of course like the Garden City
were aghast at Le Corbusier's city of towers in the park, and planners he kept the pedestrians off the streets and in the parks.
still are. Their reaction to it was, and remains, much like that of His city was like a wonderful mechanical toy. Furthermore, his
progressive nursery school teachers confronting an utterly insti- conception, as an architectural work, had a dazzling clarity, sim-
tutional orphanage. And yet, ironically, the Radiant City comes plicity and harmony. It was so orderly, so visible, so easy to under-
direcdy out of the Garden City. Le Corbusier accepted the Gar- stand. It said everything in a flash, like a good advertisement.
den City's fundamental image, superficially at least, and worked This vision and its bold symbolism have been all but irresistible
to make it practical for high densities. He described his creation to planners, housers, designers, and to developers, lenders and
as the Garden City made attainable. "The garden city is a will- mayors too. It exerts a great pull on "progressive" zoners, who
o'-the-wisp," he wrote. "Nature melts under the invasion of write rules calculated to encourage nonproject builders to re-
roads and houses and the promised seclusion becomes a crowded flect, if only a litde, the dream. No matter how vulgarized or
settlement . . . The solution will be found in the 'vertical garden clumsy the design, how dreary and useless the open space, how
city.' " dull the close-up view, an imitation of Le Corbusier shouts
In another sense too, in its relatively easy public reception, Le "Look what I made!" Like a great, visible ego it tells of some-
Corbusier's Radiant City depended upon the Garden City. The one's achievement. But as to how the city works, it tells, like the
Garden City planners and their ever increasing following among Garden City, nothing but lies.
housing reformers, students and architects were indefatigably pop- Although the Decentrists, with their devotion to the ideal of a
ularizing the ideas of the super-block, the project neighborhood, cozy town life, have never made peace with the Le Corbusier
the unchangeable plan, and grass, grass, grass; what is more they vision, most of their disciples have. Virtually all sophisticated city
were successfully establishing such attributes as the hallmarks designers today combine the two conceptions in various permuta-
of humane, socially responsible, functional, high-minded planning. tions. The rebuilding technique variously known as "selective
Le Corbusier really did not have to justify his vision in either removal" or "spot renewal" or "renewal planning" or "planned
humane or city-functional terms. If the great object of city conservation"-meaning that total clearance of a run-down area
planning was that Christopher Robin might go hoppety-hoppety is avoided-is largely the trick of seeing how many old build-
on the grass, what was wrong with Le Corbusier? The Decen- ings can be left standing and the area still converted into a pass-
14) INTllODUCTION Introduction [ zs

able version of Radiant Garden City. Zoners, highway planners, down instead of being uplifted, and they always acquired an in~
legislators, land-use planners, and parks and playground plan- congruous rim of ratty tattoo parlors and second-hand-clothing
ners--none of whom live in an ideological vacuum-constantly stores, or else just nondescript, dispirited decay. For another, peo-
use, as fixed points of reference, these two powerful visions and ple stayed away from them to a remarkable degree. Somehow,
the more sophisticated merged vision. They may wander from when the fair became part of the city, it did not work like the
the visions, they may compromise, they may vulgarize, but these fair.
are the points of departure. The architecture of the City Beautiful centers went out of style.
We shall look briefly at one other, less important, line of But the idea behind the centers was not questioned, and it has
ancestry in orthodox planning. This one begins more or less with never had more force than it does today. The idea of sorting out
the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, just about certain cultural or public functions and decontaminating their re-
the same time that Howard was formulating his Garden City lationship with the workaday city dovetailed nicely with the
ideas. The Chicago fair snubbed the exciting modem architecture Garden City teachings. The conceptions have harmoniously
which had begun to emerge in Chicago and instead dramatized a merged, much as the Garden City and the Radiant City merged,
retrogressive imitation Renaissance style. One heavy, grandiose into a sort of Radiant Garden City Beautiful, such as the im-
monument after another was arrayed in the exposition park, like mense Lincoln Square project for New York, in which a monu-
frosted pastries on a tray, in a sort of squat, decorated forecast of mental City Beautiful cultural center is one among a series of ad-
Le Corbusier's later repetitive ranks of towers in a park. This joining Radiant City and Radiant Garden City housing, shopping
orgiastic assemblage of the rich and monumental captured the and campus centers.
imagination of both planners and public. It gave impetus to a And by analogy, the principles of sorting out-and of bringing
movement called the City Beautiful, and indeed the planning of order by repression of all plans but the planners'-have been
the exposition was dominated by the man who became the leading easily extended to all manner of city functions, until today a
City Beautiful planner, Daniel Burnham of Chicago. land-use master plan for a big city is largely a matter of proposed
The aim of the City Beautiful was the City Monumental. Great placement, often in relation to transportation, of many series of
schemes were drawn up for systems of baroque boulevards, decontaminated sortings.
which mainly came to nothing. What did come out of the move- From beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the
ment was the Center Monumental, modeled on the fair. City latest amendment on urban-renewal law, the entire concoction is
after city built its civic center or its cultural center. These build- irrelevant to the workings of cities. Unstudied, unrespected, cities
ings were arranged along a boulevard as at Benjamin Franklin have served as sacrificial victims.
Parkway in Philadelphia, or along a mall like the Government
Center in Cleveland, or were bordered by park, like the Civic
Center at St. Louis, or were interspersed with park, like the Civic
Center at San Francisco. However they were arranged, the
important point was that the monuments had been sorted
out from the rest of the city, and assembled into the grandest
effect thought possible, the whole being treated as a complete
unit, in a separate and well-defined way.
People were proud of them, but the centers were not a success.
For one thing, invariably the ordinary city around them ran