Neighborhoods that would make Jane Jacobs happy

[LostInTheZone]

I feel like City Discussions has been down in the Doldrums lately; let's try and raise the level of conversation above "boy I hate the South" and "the Rust Belt sucks" and "Let's digest some think tank's manipulation of statistics".

So, I'll amend the criteria if someone can point out anything I missed, but when I think of Jane Jacobs:

1. Mixed Use, above all else. At the most basic level, this means stores mixed in with residential.

2. The whole "eyes on the street" thing: houses should be set close to the sidewalk, with windows and doors and stoops facing it. Blank walls, 1st-floor garages, hedges, all mean that no one can see you and intervene if you're being robbed. No security system is better than your nosy neighbors. Doormen are essentially paid "eyes", but in a good neighborhood this role is played by old ladies and Jimmy Stewarts stuck at home looking out the window. Things like front porches, stoops, and balconies encourage people to hang out, watch the street, and thereby keep it safe. They also provide more opportunities for casual, random social interaction. The same applies to sidewalk cafes and traditional storefront businesses with large shop windows.

3. Small blocks, that allow for freedom of movement in all directions. The point here is connectivity- people should have plenty of opportunities to randomly encounter their neighbors, and places where they can pool and sustain commerce.

4. A good supply of low-rent space: She has a chapter in "Death and Life" called "The Need for Aged Buildings". Jacobs is often mistakenly cited as the grandmother of all Nimbys, and people think she was trying to say every neighborhood should look like Greenwich Village, red brick with no skyscrapers. What she meant, though, was that old buildings provide opportunities for new people to move in, and low-rent storefronts in old buildings provide opportunities for small-business startups. She was very big on entrepeneurialism. New construction comes with high capital costs and too much of it means only wealthy people and chain stores can afford to buy into a neighborhood.

5. Space should be flexible: houses should be able to be divided into apartments, or converted back into single-family housing, or turned to commercial use. Steel mills are very un-adaptable; textile lofts and such were designed as flexible raw space to start with, and easily become apartments, studios, office space, or small manufacturing operations. It is this urbanite's hope that when all the street-facing garages being built today become less valuable as parking space, they can easily be adapted into storefronts.

6. need for a civic class: the neighborhood must have stakeholders. It must have a stable population of long-term renters or owners who care about the place. A place made up of only short-term renters will be slummy, whether it's a neighborhood that absorbs wave after wave of new immigrants who can't wait to move out, or its a student ghetto. Absentee landlords are bad for a city. Profits from small business are reinvested in the neighborhood, not shipped off to corporate headquarters. Merchants become community leaders when they are well-known to the neighborhood patrons, they have an active personal stake in keeping away crime, and stores are places for people to socialize and organize. As much as the "latte class" has been derided, places like coffee shops are important because they function like common living rooms for the community. Cafes that offer internet access turn a solitary activity into a social one.

7. activity throughout the day. Bedroom communities and 9-5 office districts are only busy at the morning and afternoon rush hours and lunchtime. Their streets and parks are rather dead at other times. With a limited supply of potential users, they can only support certain types of businesses: morning coffee shops, lunch places, happy-hour after-work bars. Things tend to close early. A street with too many bank branches will be pretty quiet after 5pm; a street with too many bars won't have too many users in the afternoon. If you have lots of people on different schedules, and a diversity of businesses, there ought to be people out all day. The earliest baker should pass the last guy coming home from the bar at 3am.

8. children and families add greatly to the vitality of a place; on a good street provides a safe place for children to play without the supervision of their parents, because they are being watched by neighbors.

---------------

in Philadelphia, I would say that Near South Philly best matches the 1960s version of the West Village Jane Jacobs loved so much- Queen Village, Bella Vista, and the rapidly infilling Hawthorne area. The building stock goes from the 17th century up to brand new townhouses, small apartments and commercial buildings. There's active, small-storefront retail strips along South Street, Ninth (including the Italian street market), Bainbridge, Christian, Passayunk, and other streets, and even the mostly residential blocks support a store or two. There's plenty of low-rent space leftover from when this area was a fabric wholesaling district. The area's been stable or improving for decades. The population is a mix of old-school Italian families, new Hispanic and Asian immigrants, mostly less-than-obnoxious yuppies, some with families, and a good smattering of hipsters and gays. There's room for it to grow yet as well, since there's still scattered empty lots, shells, and unrennovated old space.

map:

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/4020/picture10im7.th.png (http://img126.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture10im7.png)

Sasso Photo Tour (click picture):

http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/cc/qvbv/qv_newwave2.jpg (http://phillyskyline.com/hoods/cc/qvbv/)

[eemy]

I suppose that the Annex in Toronto must have made her happy since she settled there, but I'm not sure that it necessarily meets all the qualifications that you have there, though I think it comes awfully close.

[LostInTheZone]

^it's an awfully high standard, and in many ways she's writing about a dead culture- people are really a lot less inclined to trust eachother than they used to be, and mom-and-pop stores have become the exception rather than the rule. I found that whole section about how people used to leave spare keys with shopkeepers almost unbelievable. Very few places in North America have the history and built environment necessary to support this kind of neighborhood.

So anything that even comes close is OK, and the whole point is to discuss anyway. Where do you think the Annex fails?

[seaskyfan]

I think Jane would like my neighborhood in Seattle. I live in the Wallingford District which is in North Seattle, just across I-5 from the University of Washington. Pretty much everything I need is in walking distance (grocery store, hardware store, restaurants, movie theaters, parks), and there are a lot of coffee shops and similar places where you are constantly running into the neighbors. Most of the houses around me were built around 100 years ago (super old for Seattle) and folks are fixing them up. There are a lot of kids on the street and regular get togethers for the neighbors. The main part of the neighborhood sees activity throughout the day, with stuff going on generally from 6 in the morning when the coffee places open unti 2 in the morning when the bars close.

I think some things Jane wouldn't be as excited about are the lack of density (a lot of the neighborhood is zoned single family) and everything has gotten pretty expensive.

My partner grew up in the neighborhood and our next door neighbor has been there since 1944. A lot of folks are pretty rooted here.

I think Jane would also like a couple of other areas of Seattle, including Ballard and Capitol Hill.

[Kilgore Trout]

my neighbourhood in montreal, mile end, fits most of these qualifications quite nicely. you can see my 400+ photos of it here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherdewolf/sets/72157600010517114/) on flickr.

1. Mixed Use, above all else.

yes. although the sidestreets remain mostly residential, the commercial streets (of which there are six) usually have retail on the street and apartments above. there is some office space mixed around the neighbourhood, especially in old industrial buildings.

2. The whole "eyes on the street" thing

big time. balconies and outdoor staircases are a part of montreal's architectural vernacular; this encourages people to be outside even when they are at home. in the warm months there is always somebody watching over the street from his or her balcony, especially on warm nights. on commercial streets there are also many patios and terraces on which people sit.

3. Small blocks, that allow for freedom of movement in all directions.

the east-west blocks are short but the north-south blocks are pretty long. as a result, most of the retail activity is centered around the east-west streets and on the shortest blocks of the north-south artery, park avenue. definitely the neighbourhood's biggest flaw from a design standpoint.

4. A good supply of low-rent space

in abundance. mile end has an extremely heterogeneous building stock. this lends itself to a diversity of residents and lifestyles. the commercial building stock is also very mixed which makes for cheap, flexible retail space.

5. Space should be flexible

there are many old industrial buildings that have been converted into other uses: office space, residential lofts, performance venues, startup businesses. residential space is flexible in that each building contains multiple units that can be enlarged or subdivided. the building at my corner, for instance, had four huge apartments that were recently subdivided into 12 studio condominiums.

6. need for a civic class

this probably wasn't true 20 years ago, but it is today. there is a unique mix of residents here and many of them have vested interests in the neighbourhood. recently the city tried to rename the neighbourhood's main street and the whole community banded together to fight it. people take an active interest in neighbourhood issues. at the same time, there is enough of a transient population to ensure that it doesn't have a cloistered, insular feel.

7. activity throughout the day.

uh huh. not only do many people work conventional jobs here (ubisoft has a huge gaming studio with 1000+ employees in an old factory), a disproportionate number of mile end's residents work at home. people also come here from across the city to shop and eat. as a result, the neighbourhood is always busy.

8. children and families add greatly to the vitality of a place

mile end has always had a lot of immigrant families; i have two friends who were born and raised in this neighbourhood. many of the professionals who have settled here over the past twenty years did so precisely because it is a good alternative to the suburbs. i live right on the neighbourhood's busiest street and there are still a number of families around me. in the summer there are always children playing in the alley behind my apartment.

i should also mention that mile end/outremont is the centre of montreal's large hassidic jewish community---there are 8,000 hassids who live here. they usually have very large families so, because of them more than anything else, there is always an abundance of children playing in the streets.

[timeo]

So anything that even comes close is OK, and the whole point is to discuss anyway. Where do you think the Annex fails?

The Annex is essentially a neighbourhood that is bordered by railroad tracks in the north and Bloor Street to the south which is Toronto's main east-west street (the subway runs underneath it). Given the criteria, I think one of the most glaring factor that you describe that doesn't exist in the Annex is the "houses should be set close to the sidewalk, with windows and doors and stoops facing it." For sure, homes in the Annex are entirely three-storeyed, and have maybe sideyard setbacks of maybe 2.5 to 3 metres, which gives it a very cozy continuous street wall feel to it, but its buildings are actually set rather far back from the street. Further, there are lots of large trees (the area was developed in the 1880s) that are planted in the front lawn, which somewhat obscures views, though not by a large degree. The great thing about this though is that it really gives the area a sense of place because the trees are so tall and there's actually a forest canopy above the street itself.

Commercial-wise, Dupont and Davenport to the north by the railroad tracks are not as successful as Bloor, but that is simply by virtue that one could consider them outside of downtown proper already, and thus has less people walking around it even though its urban landscape is amenable to those found on Bloor. There's also more synergies between Koreatown that is immediately west of Bathurst where the Annex ends and the University of Toronto area to the east and south-east of the Annex, and lots of people walk around between those areas. Business-wise, there are a lot of cheap restaurants nearby that specialise in authentic ethnic foods even though the Annex itself is one of the more homogenous areas of downtown.

And funnily enough, since UT is so close, there actually are a lot of students who live in the Annex, even though its homes on average go for $900,000+ CDN. No idea how much rent is, but I would wager that it is not cheap. Its proximity also means there are lots of students around the day as well at night, so you have people waking up early and grabbing breakfast, lunch crowd, dinner, dessert, then the late night coffee people for those who get out of concerts at Lee's Palace or the numerous pubs in the area etc. That's one of the more admirable aspects of the neighbourhood. There are also lots of families in the area.

Along Bloor:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v32/timeo/city/IMG_0323.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v32/timeo/city/IMG_0398.jpg

In the residential areas:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v32/timeo/city/IMG_0371.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v32/timeo/city/IMG_0377.jpg

[Cirrus]

The neighborhoods that comprise Mid-City, DC fit the criteria, as well as a few others in town.

It's worth noting that slowly but surely we are becoming capable of building these types of places again, or rather, places that have the potential to become like these with age.

[tdawg]

I definitely think that my neighborhood of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn fits the bill. The only that might hold us back is that rents over the past five years have skyrocketed but it's still possible to find cheaper apartments across the BQE expressway near the waterfront.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cobble+hill

[VivaLFuego]

From Chicago, neighborhoods with mixed uses, mixed vintage of building stock, moderate to high density, pedestrian retail districts, active neighborhood associations, large 'family' populations:

Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, Roscoe Village, Wicker Park, Albany Park, Little Village, Pilsen

[Marcu]

From Chicago, neighborhoods with mixed uses, mixed vintage of building stock, moderate to high density, pedestrian retail districts, active neighborhood associations, large 'family' populations:

Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, Roscoe Village, Wicker Park, Albany Park, Little Village, Pilsen

I'd also include Lincoln Square, Andersonville, Bucktown, parts of Rogers Park, parts of Uptown, parts of Wrigleyville, parts of Kenwood. Also suburbs like Evanston and Oak Park.

[Rusty van Reddick]

timeo, head just west of the Annex to my old neighbourhood, Seaton Village, and voila, you have all of the Jane Jacobs criteria (with more kids than in the Annex) and smaller lots with houses mere feet from the sidewalk. My partner and I lived at 4 Follis.

[MarkDaMan]

Portland's Pearl, I think, would make Jane happy.

excuse my time dates, these pics were actually taken last spring but my camera screwed up...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/103139787_b5fdea4c08.jpg?v=1140640322

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/31/103139785_d336c321a7.jpg?v=1176245034

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/33/100189044_f947b93925.jpg?v=0

and less we not forget, America's first modern streetcar.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/100189045_475ae062f0.jpg?v=0

http://www.hoytstreetproperties.com/images/streetcar_by_starbucks.jpg
last pic not mine

[niwell]

I'd say the whole Plateau/Mile-End area in Montreal is possibly the best example in Canada. Could be wrong though. Certainly some inner Toronto areas are close as well.

In Ottawa, Centretown is the best example, though it suffers from uniform block sizes. There are other great areas in Ottawa, but from a Jacobsian (does that work?) perspective they suffer from being being aligned along a single axis. Namely retail streets such as Bank st. south of downtown and Wellington/Richmond West of downtown. Hintonburg may have greater promise in the future due to it's relatively affordable housing and erratic street pattern. If greater retail possibilities and infill occur at the rate they are it may not be long at all.

Centretown:
http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=45.414479,-75.694749&spn=0.007185,0.021629&t=k&om=1

Hintonburg:
http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&ll=45.404386,-75.723739&spn=0.007186,0.014591&t=k

[Rufus]

Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh meets all the criteria. It's very walkable, with a good shopping district. Not just trendy shops but a grocery store, banks, a post office, a library, and neighborhood schools. A nice mix of housing: handsome apartment buildings, rowhouses, duplexes, and singles. Plenty of bus routes. It's like the perfect neighborhood.

[pdxstreetcar]

http://www.pdx.edu/usp/janejacobs_visit.html

Jane Jacobs: Parting Words (2007) - 20 min.
http://www.diggablecity.org/janejacobs.mov

Parting Words captures urban thinker, writer, and activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) in her final public appearance in Portland, Oregon. On tour to promote her book, DARK AGE AHEAD (2004), Jacobs discusses the imperative for culturally diverse and innovative cities, among numerous other issues. Exploring passages from her seminal work, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES (1961) and looking at Jacobs through the eyes of leading Oregon planners, the film highlights Jacobs’ clear-eyed perspectives on the problems and opportunities facing American cities. Parting Words demonstrates Jane Jacobs’ long and abiding influence on urban design and planning.

Produced and Directed by Kevin Balmer, PSU Master of Urban and Regional Planning Graduate (2006); Diggable Films.

Written and Narrated by Chet Orloff, Director, Pamplin Institute & Collection; PSU Adj. Prof. Urban Studies and Planning; President, Oregon History Works/Museum of the City; Director Emeritus, Oregon Historical Society.

http://www.diggablecity.org/janejacobs.mov

[tackledspoon]

I was talking to a friend and former neighbor of Jane Jacobs last night at a meeting about the proposed redesign of Washington Square Park (another issue altogether). I can think of dozens of neighborhoods that fit this mold, almost all of them old and northeastern (or Quebecois). I'm more interested in what neighborhoods are currently developing that would make Jane Jacobs smile. Portland comes up time and again in discussions like this and I'm really hoping to get out there some time over the summer and see what it's like.

[Chicago103]

From Chicago, neighborhoods with mixed uses, mixed vintage of building stock, moderate to high density, pedestrian retail districts, active neighborhood associations, large 'family' populations:

Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, Roscoe Village, Wicker Park, Albany Park, Little Village, Pilsen

I would also add Bridgeport to that list, Bridgeport back in the day for sure but still to an extent today.

What would Jacobs think of neighborhoods in or near a CBD, in Chicago that would include parts of the Near North Side which have an established residential population, albeit most in highrises. Also is it more important that people actually live urban lifestyles or does it just have to be possible, for instance the Loop, south and west loops one can live an urban lifestyle but in the case of the central loop the critical mass isnt there yet and in the south and west loops many choose not to live an urban lifestyle. If Norman Rockwell were alive today he would be a hardcore urbanist compared to all the suburban minded people who are into the faux Rockwell romanticism. Heck I think Frank Lloyd Wright who was known as somewhat of a dis-urbanist in his day but in reality just preffered either streetcar suburbs like Oak Park, small towns or rural areas would be a hardcore urbanist compared to the suburban masses of today.

I take it Jacobs preferred living in a house over a highrise since she lived in a house. I think she stressed that you can have your house and yard and yet still live in a very urban neighborhood and have an urban lifestyle, stuff that MikeToronto and I talk about all the time. Those pictures of the Annex say it all, you can walk from those picturesque residential streets to those commercial streets. Its neighborhoods like that which used to exist all over the US and Canada from big city to small town where community really flourished.

[shappy]

Jacobs and family lived in an apartment in Kensington Market when they first moved to Toronto... that hood (especially back then) is a fantastic prototype of the neighbourhood Jacobs describes.

[MolsonExport]

my neighbourhood in montreal, mile end, fits most of these qualifications quite nicely. you can see my 400+ photos of it here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherdewolf/sets/72157600010517114/) on flickr.



yes. although the sidestreets remain mostly residential, the commercial streets (of which there are six) usually have retail on the street and apartments above. there is some office space mixed around the neighbourhood, especially in old industrial buildings.



big time. balconies and outdoor staircases are a part of montreal's architectural vernacular; this encourages people to be outside even when they are at home. in the warm months there is always somebody watching over the street from his or her balcony, especially on warm nights. on commercial streets there are also many patios and terraces on which people sit.



the east-west blocks are short but the north-south blocks are pretty long. as a result, most of the retail activity is centered around the east-west streets and on the shortest blocks of the north-south artery, park avenue. definitely the neighbourhood's biggest flaw from a design standpoint.



in abundance. mile end has an extremely heterogeneous building stock. this lends itself to a diversity of residents and lifestyles. the commercial building stock is also very mixed which makes for cheap, flexible retail space.



there are many old industrial buildings that have been converted into other uses: office space, residential lofts, performance venues, startup businesses. residential space is flexible in that each building contains multiple units that can be enlarged or subdivided. the building at my corner, for instance, had four huge apartments that were recently subdivided into 12 studio condominiums.



this probably wasn't true 20 years ago, but it is today. there is a unique mix of residents here and many of them have vested interests in the neighbourhood. recently the city tried to rename the neighbourhood's main street and the whole community banded together to fight it. people take an active interest in neighbourhood issues. at the same time, there is enough of a transient population to ensure that it doesn't have a cloistered, insular feel.



uh huh. not only do many people work conventional jobs here (ubisoft has a huge gaming studio with 1000+ employees in an old factory), a disproportionate number of mile end's residents work at home. people also come here from across the city to shop and eat. as a result, the neighbourhood is always busy.



mile end has always had a lot of immigrant families; i have two friends who were born and raised in this neighbourhood. many of the professionals who have settled here over the past twenty years did so precisely because it is a good alternative to the suburbs. i live right on the neighbourhood's busiest street and there are still a number of families around me. in the summer there are always children playing in the alley behind my apartment.

i should also mention that mile end/outremont is the centre of montreal's large hassidic jewish community---there are 8,000 hassids who live here. they usually have very large families so, because of them more than anything else, there is always an abundance of children playing in the streets.

An excellent nomination, which I would be happy to second. Lump in also the Plateau Mont Royale.

[shovel_ready]

^it's an awfully high standard, and in many ways she's writing about a dead culture- people are really a lot less inclined to trust eachother than they used to be, and mom-and-pop stores have become the exception rather than the rule. I found that whole section about how people used to leave spare keys with shopkeepers almost unbelievable. Very few places in North America have the history and built environment necessary to support this kind of neighborhood.

I have noticed this. As great as Jane's writings and observations were, these concepts apply to very few North American cities. Most outward city growth after the Civil War era came in the form of residential enclaves primarily consisting of detached frame houses, with mixed uses being confined to dedicated commercial strips found every 6 to 8 blocks or so.

The US evolved as a suburban nation since then. These peripheral neighborhoods only had relatively large densities because people had much bigger families back then. With today's low family size coupled with the low dwelling unit density of these place, it can be a real challenge to sustain the neighborhood's commercial districts.

The Jacobsonian 100 du/acre neighborhood is a rarity in America. It's confined to certain sections of the biggest cities. Planners have to be careful and contextual when applying her ideals in literal form. She openly derided huge swaths of other cities as being too "low-density," "semi-suburban," and "dead zones" for her tastes. Mind you, many of these places in their heyday were among the most urban places in our nation.

Jacobs' favorite neighborhoods she mentioned in The Death and Life of Great American Cities:
-Manhattan's Greenwich Village (which ironically today would be too much of a wealthy monoculture for her principles to work)
-Boston's North End
-Philly's Rittenhouse Square
-Chicago's Back Of The Yards
-San Francisco's Nob+Russian Hill

Oh, and "eyes on the street" has largely devolved into "eyes on the TV", no matter what kind of neighborhood, city, or density we're talking about.

[kool maudit]

i wouldn't be at all surprised if there were people in my neighbourhood who left keys with local shopkeepers.

i would have done it at a few places on bernard street, when i lived up there.