Jacobs' urban village worthy model
By Richard White, For The StarPhoenixFebruary 6, 2009
Final of a four-part series on Saskatoon's development. White, director of strategic initiatives with Riddell Kurczaba Architecture of Calgary, has written on art, architecture and urban culture for more than 20 years. He can be reached at [email protected].
I am always a bit suspicious of what planners recommend.
While I respect the work urban planners do in trying to make our cities better places to live, work and play, I have always been a little skeptical after reading many years ago, the late Jane Jacobs' 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
One section of the book is a criticism of city planning. Jacobs states: "American downtowns are not declining mysteriously because they are anachronisms, not because automobiles have drained their users away. They are being witlessly murdered, in a good part by deliberate policies of sorting out leisure uses, from work uses, under the misapprehension that this is orderly city planning."
Later, she calls it as she sees it: "Urban planning is dominated by group think ... Principles of planning have been developed historically and have acquired so much support of habit and vested interest that planners, architects and developers accept them without question."
Recommendations need caution
In the '60s, urban planners across North America were advocating the creation of pedestrian malls as the way to add vitality to the declining downtowns in most cities. By the '90s, most of these malls had failed and were being removed.
In the '70s, planners lobbied for the creation of mega urban renewal projects like Calgary's Convention Centre, Glenbow Museum, Bow Valley College or Board of Education Building, most of which have failed to provide the promised urban vitality. The '70s also saw developers creating large indoor downtown shopping malls as a means to compete with suburban indoor malls. Again, most of these have struggled -- except in major cities with large downtown residential populations, such as in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Urban planners are now touting the importance of street-front retail, with multiple entrances on all downtown streets. As a result, the major downtown indoor shopping malls and old office buildings are redeveloping their street level space to provide more street entrances for retailers, cafes and restaurants -- just what Jacobs told them to do in 1961.
Similarly, it was urban planners in winter cities who thought that creating sky bridges from building to building would be a good idea to protect pedestrians from the harsh winter elements. Now it is planners who are saying these bridges have sucked the life off the street.
One of the things I have learned over the years is the "unintended consequences of urban policy changes has been to shaping our city centres." Policy is often changed or created with the best of intentions, but what ends up happening are unintended long-term negative consequences.
Beware of highrises
Planners are currently touting the need for highrise condo development next to LRT stations. The City of Calgary recently invited a few out-of-town urban planners to comment on Transit Oriented Development (TOD) plans for Brentwood. Surprise, surprise -- they were in favour of the city's plans for highrise development.
I question how planners from other cities can make informed recommendations about a city without an intimate knowledge of its unique urban characteristics. Calgary is not Portland, Ore., and it is not Vancouver.
I am again reminded of Jacobs, who cautioned that "planners must understand thoroughly the sense of place that they are dealing with ... they must know it not in some generalized way, but in terms of its precise and unique place within the city they are dealing with. Much of what they need to know they can learn from no one but the people of the place, because nobody knows more about it than they do."
What works in other cities won't necessarily work in Saskatoon. Highrise condos may be a good idea in some cities, but in a winter city, they are brutal.
After working in downtown Calgary for 12 years and walking the streets from meeting to meeting, if I learned nothing else, I learned about the harsh pedestrian environment created by highrise buildings. One of the most common community comments that I have heard from people living near LRT stations in Calgary is that they don't want to live in a downtown-like environment.
So let's give them a different model. I think it is critical that we listen to the people who live in a community and work with them, as I truly believe if we can get the community's buy-in, we will get a better product.
That being said, I am not in favour of getting everyone's buy-in. There will always be a few BANANAs (Build Almost Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Jane Jacobs' urban village
I think if residents were presented with a Jacobs-based model for an urban village, it would get their buy-in.
A Jacobs' community would have streets lined with shops, cafes and restaurants, not big boxes. The focus would be on creating public spaces -- sidewalks, plazas and parks -- that are bordered with shops, restaurants and other pedestrian-oriented activities.
The success of an open space (plaza or park) is the diversity and density of things to do at its edges. There would be a mixture of different density and design housing from four-storey walk-ups to mid-rise, 10-storey condos built out over a 20- or 25-year period. Jacobs believed in gradual, not cataclysmic, change.
Throughout her book, Jacobs indicated that the larger the building, the less vitality it will create -- be it a large office tower, large condo or large arts or retail centre. A Jacobs village would not have any highrises. Her urban village plan would not be called "transit-oriented development," it would be a balanced plan that integrates land use policy for pedestrians, transit and vehicles rather than favouring one over the other.
I truly believe all of the policies and plans created by urban planners are done with the best of intentions in mind and based on the best practice information available at the time.
In my mind, urban planning is more of an art than a science. From Jacobs' perspective it is more like the life sciences than the physical sciences. For her, good urban planning is not about probability theory, surveys and statistical methodology. It is more about collection, description, classification and observation of what works and what doesn't.
Cities must be viewed from the microscopic or the street level view of the naked eye, not from looking from above (most master plans show images from an aerial perspective).
She cautions that planners love to "create new visions and plans of what "ideally" a place should be, rather than wander the labyrinths trying futilely to put together the pieces of last year's vision."
Jacobs indicated in 1961 that community vitality is not the result of a master plan -- instead, it is piecemeal and cumulative. She observed that it is unrealistic to expect positive change from revolutionary improvement plans. Perhaps Jacobs said it best when she wrote: "A common folly of planners and politicians is that they wish into being too many human behavioral changes."
Share your vision
We will follow-up this series with a package of ideas and comments from you, our readers, so we are asking you to share your thoughts on this important issue.
How do you feel about the way Saskatoon has developed so far? What do you like best? What do you dislike? What is missing? What could help turn Saskatoon into an "urban playground?" How do you feel about the city's art placement program? Is there a key developmental issue the city should be focusing upon? What is your vision for Saskatoon?
Pease limit your responses to 200 words and email them to:
[email protected];
or mail them to:
Saskatoon Development,
c/o The StarPhoenix
204 Fifth Ave. North
Saskatoon, SK
S7K 2P1
© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix
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