'Jane's children': Former city planner edits book in honor of urban planning icon
By Ben Fulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Stephen Goldsmith will read selections from "What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane...
Long before "sustainability" became a byword for self-supporting ecosystems and economies -- and a favorite catchphrase among op-ed columnists -- Stephen Goldsmith remembers when the word was used with extreme caution.
He recalls one meeting in particular of Envision Utah, a coalition formed to coordinate the state's economic growth and quality of life. Back in 1999, sitting in a room with 30 people, Goldsmith was told to remove every mention of the word from the organization's annual report.
"It was seen as code for the environmentalist agenda of promoting birth control," said Goldsmith, who served two years as Salt Lake City planning director under Rocky Anderson's administration.
How times have changed.
As harbinger of that consciousness, many historians point to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring , while Goldsmith credits Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities .
Unlike Carson, Jacobs made manifest a whole host of words and concepts most of us take for granted or, depending upon your political alliance, openly despise.
Urban planners talk of "mixed-use" developments. Economists and community activists laud the practice of "import replacement."
If you know the meaning of those words, lament the lack of inner-city bicycle lanes or fulminate over "urban sprawl," you have Jacobs to thank. A critic of unchecked and unexamined urban expansion, Jacobs is credited as first to differentiate between expansion and development, while promoting the design of cities with human interaction above the accommodation of cars.
For Goldsmith, Jacobs served as mentor to his career as artist, activist and Artspace founder. So central a figure was Jacobs to his work, in fact, that Goldsmith eventually worked his way into the living room of the renowned writer and urban planner's Toronto home before her 2006 death.
He showed her the progression of his Artspace project from the germ of an idea in 1979 to its 2001 culmination in the Bridge Project and the wide-scale rejuvenation of Salt Lake City's west side that followed.
" 'You see?' Jacobs said. 'This was bottom-up and not top-down,' " Goldsmith recalls Jacobs saying. "'It was incremental development that focused on diversity of use, and that's what gives places their vitality and resiliency."
Goldsmith's apprenticeship with Jacobs has come full circle with the imminent publication of What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs , which he co-edited with Lynne Elizabeth, the Oakland-based past president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. An omnibus of essays by 30 leading economists, scholars, planners and other figures influenced by Jacobs' legacy and ideas, its arrival coincides with free neighborhood tours by foot and bike held nationwide known as "Jane's Walks" and "Jane's Rolls." It also coincides with a spate of three other Jacobs and Jacobs-related books.
On May 1, Goldsmith will host his own "Jane's Walk" through the 1500 E. 1500 South neighborhood, followed by a reading of selections from the book at The King's English Bookshop.
"Many books on Jacobs take a look back," Goldsmith said. "This book is very much a forward lean, with suggestions on community engagement included. It's not meant as a book to read before going to sleep."
The book has received glowing jacket blurbs, and enthusiastic words from legendary Talking Heads founder and artist David Byrne, who calls the contributors "Jane's children." Co-editor Elizabeth sees the spate of Jacobs-related books as proof of her enduring influence.
"Jane believed you could understand the whole world by paying attention to cities," Elizabeth said. "She was not schooled formally, but was very well read and perceptive about how cities functioned. Technically, she was an autodidact."
Goldsmith sees the progression in development of downtown Salt Lake City's City Creek project as further evidence that Jacobs' ideas are here to stay.
"Twenty years ago, the same people who brought this into being might have said ideas such as 'mixed use' were fine for the west side, but not for city center," Goldsmith said. "Here we are now and the term 'mixed use' is celebrated."
http://www.sltrib.com/arts/ci_14938565
This is a perfect opportunity to have a forum get together! We can all go eat afterwards at one of the restaurants in the neighborhood! What do you all think?
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