Suggestions for the Reading Response:

-What are the most important arguments and suggestions that you can take away from the text?

-Which arguments would you disagree with the author on, and why?

-How do you evaluate the text in light of its historical context?

-Which arguments do you consider significant for your future work as an architect?

Introduction, pp. 3-25

She makes an example where she introduces the motif of the sidewalks. For her sidewalks do more than just move people, but are crucial to social life in cities. This in a bottom-up or organic way and not imposed top-down. She sais that planners should observe actual neighborhoods, how people use sidewalks, parks and streets, rather than impose abstract aesthetic or ideals. With that she challenges the Garden City / Decentrists. In my opinion that is not completely right. For me a dense and vibrant city is also very exhausting and a bit of green and more quiet helps me to mange my day to day life. The Central Park for example provides New York with a place to escape and it was planned more top down than bottom up. Today, I guess that the parks “work” because it was integrated with the city fabric. It attracts all kind of visitors and is continuously cared for. Same for the Emerald Necklace around Boston.

As a take away from what Janes Jacobs writes is that a design with the real, messy life of the street in mind is very important. Looking at the people that live there where I want to build, transform or intervene.

I don’t really disagree with her. The only thing I would be a bit careful about is density. I see how it brings life to a place, but if it’s pushed too far it can make living conditions worse. Still, overall, her arguments make a lot of sense.

Thinking about when she was writing makes it even clearer. After the war, many cities were rebuilt with highways and big housing projects, but those often turned out cold and empty.

For me as a future architect, her ideas are really useful. I find the call for diversity in buildings and uses especially important, because it makes neighborhoods more adaptable. And I like her view of cities as complex systems, it makes me think less about total control and more about creating spaces where life can grow naturally.

Jacob's seems to be very convinced of high density cities with small blocks. This might be one of the aspects where I would disagree with her. In my opinion we have come to value privacy and space. Higher densities solve certain problems when it comes to mass housing but on the other hand they seem to enhance chaos, bring noise and make it easier for illnesses to spread. Her point of view seems to be based on one hand on her times period which was totally different from our every day life and on the other hand on American cities, which are known to have widespread suburbs and coming from those points of view I agree with her take on higher densities in housing.

Through the reading I realized how little this "utopian city" of the Radiant Garden City Beautiful has changed. Only in the past years the focus seems to have started to shift toward a more social utopia with a clearer consciousness of mixed uses and higher diversities in the city fabric. It is fascinating how we still debate over topics and issues that were already relevant half a century ago.

I think you cannot simply force life into a neighborhood; it has to come from the citizens themselves. It reminds me a lot of the villes nouvelles around Paris or also the "urban aesthetic" of Zürich Nord. I think it is really important to always look at theories as theories, and not take everything as a universal truth.

In contrast, Jacobs calls for new principles for genuine dynamics that will ensure a strong social fabric, such as mixed uses, the juxtaposition of old and new buildings, and sufficient density.

I interpret Jane Jacobs text as a call not only to design cities, but also to see and understand how people really live there in order to create realistic and sustainable designs. I agree with Jane Jacobs on many things, but not everything. Jacobs is not enthusiastic about large-scale planning, but without it, public transportation, for example, would hardly be possible. In addition, social problems such as poverty and inequality cannot really be solved through precise urban design, as these issues must especially be addressed politically.

Her text kept reminding me of the Viadukte in Zurich, when they were used as creative spaces and then got rebuilt, not because of malicious intentions, but because it was genuinely believed to help - improvements. But not asking or understanding is as much of an act as asking the tenants. "There is a quality meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be observed."

She argues that city planners have essentialy lost connection to what is functional and what may be idealistic but illusionary. Furthermore, she states that this illusionary way of planning amongst planners is not being stopped but rather contineud. It struck many cities in the USA, she claims. One example she gives is Morningside Heights. Here, once the planners accomplished their vision, the crime rate spiked and commerce dwindled. Jacobs argues this to be due to merely large institutions being present. This hinders liveliness entering the district. While I do not starkly disagree with her ideas, I have a somewhat different opinion regarding her disdain for large institutions in some occasions. I belive, in certain cases - for instance, flood protection - large instutitions may be essential, becasue they are easier to organise and direct... but that same centralisation can very quickly turn destructive.

Something, I can certainly take out of her text, is that buildings are objects which must be carefully integrated into their surrounding context to harmonise well and behave organically. This means buildings must not be treated as copy-paste items, but rather be crafter with care and precision according to their individual requirements.

Jacobs uses Boston’s North End as an example, showing how residents themselves found ways to maintain and improve their spaces. They rehabilitated buildings, invested their own earnings, and bartered skilled work, all without support from banks or public funds.
She describes how MIT and Harvard students were trained through paper exercises (pp. 8–9) to redesign the neighborhood, treating it as a “slum” that needed to be cleared and rebuilt according to orthodox planning ideas.
What I found particularly interesting, and what is still relevant in todays time, is her conversation with a Boston city planner.

The dialogue reveals a contradiction: the statistics (such as the low death rate and low delinquency in the North End) show that the area does not match the theoretical image of a slum.
Even the planner himself admits he enjoys walking through its lively, cheerful streets. Yet despite the evidence, he remains convinced that the neighborhood must eventually be rebuilt, because that is what planning theory dictates about super-dense, low-income areas.
This example highlights how planning theory, taught in schools and accepted as the “correct” approach, should be questioned before being blindly followed. Jacobs Theory that working with existing structures and supporting people’s actual needs leads to vitality, whereas ignoring these realities and imposing large-scale, costly redevelopment often produces lifeless results.

On paper, Boston North End is said to be a slum, but Jacobs came to a totally different result, closely investigating the space and looking through the eye of the inhabitants, not her own ones, as she argues that the innate functioning structure of a place is uniquely bound to the place and has to be understood.

For me, this raises the question, what, if not money, as in the example of North End Boston, are the factors of successful city planning? What does make an area liveable? And for whom?

The aspect I found most interesting diving into, was the idea of “intricate mutual support”. “This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially.” (p. 14)

Sadly, and I compared it to todays’ city planning while reading the text, the “Flash”-like (p. 23) bold symbolism of planning ideas that simplify complex situations, are tempting and appear convincible, even today.

How can the city planner even participate in the planning, if it is always an imitation from functioning examples that have emerged by themselves, as North End Bosten, not by the hand of city planner? How can the city planner adopt the ideas in such a way that it doesn’t induce a certain way of how to use the area, instead enable the people to plan it themselves? I have the opinion that it also is dependent of the people living in this area, and, as a result, also dependent on the political system and if people with lower income have the capacity to take part at the life surrounding them.

In its historical context, the 50s mark the end of the unbroken belief in modernism and its idealism. Thus, Jane Jacobs text is relevant, even though unfashionable at that time.

Compared to reconstruction strategies of German cities for example, they differ from city to city: Munich has high degree of rebuilding of buildings in their pre-war city structure, its existing complexity and overlay of uses. At that time, this perspective was largely criticised as unmodern, and being criticised for making the city look like it was before WW2. This again is a reference to the critique of the ‘City Beautiful’.

When does the image divide from its context, when is a recollection and the view towards the existing denying the contemporary problems to solve, as supposedly proposed by Le Corbusier and the Garden City? I think it is a small degree in which we argue, and worth investigating closely.

In the end, she’s not only talking about planning, but also about how people actually live in cities. Cities happen through human activity, architecture, chance encounters, slow moments, but also hectic and fast rhythms. If planning is too uniform, life gets sucked out of the area and what’s left is monotony. I especially like her idea of small blocks with high density, because that makes space for variety and creates a richer kind of urban life.

The part where I’m not fully convinced is her idea of the “self-destruction of diversity.” I see what she means, but I think gentrification is not just caused by individuals improving places. The real issue is the institutions and systems that push people out. Everyday people might take part in the upgrading, but the displacement comes mainly from larger structures.

For me, Jacobs’ way of thinking is very practical. She doesn’t care much for abstract ideals but looks at what actually happens in real city life. That’s interesting, because it changes how we think about planning: it’s not just about theories or the “perfect” house model, but about the people who live with and in our plans. If planners don’t talk with people and understand their needs, cities risk becoming monotone or, in the worst case, lifeless.

She critiques the process of erasing nonconforming uses in the search for an ideal sense of order. In her view, many planners and teachers have fallen for the collective imaginary of dream cities, failing to develop a truly critical standpoint and overlooking the complexity of urban life.

Although Jacobs’ position is convincing, I would argue that her rejection of theory is too absolute. Theory, while often misused, can provide valuable tools for understanding and interpreting the complexity of cities. If it remains flexible and is continuously tested against reality, it can coexist with observation rather than stand in opposition to it.

Placed in its historical context, the text becomes even more significant. Written in 1961, it emerged during a time when urban renewal, automobile infrastructure, and suburban expansion were transforming American cities. Jacobs’ critique stands as a radical counter to the dominant planning practices of the period, which prioritized order and large-scale schemes over the lived realities of communities.

I think as an architecture student, Jacobs’ arguments remain very relevant. The text addresses the need to unlearn familiar suppositions and oversimplifications, encouraging curiosity about how spaces are truly used and experienced. Her point is that cities should be approached critically and humbly, with design understood as a dialogue with reality rather than as the realization of abstract ideals.

She criticises the 'radiant city' by le corbusier as well as the garden city models. She finds these models to be utopian and anti- urban, which ignore how real cities function. She deems these 'urban renewal' projects as architecture built for ideals, not people, as economically irrational and socially damaging.

Jacobs advocates for cities that embrace diversity and complexity, which include mixed use buildings in the same area and high density urban environments, where old and new buildings co-exist. She insists that urban planning should be observational and reality- based urban design. it must start off with close empirical observations, and then evolve from bottom- up community insights, not top- down planning. according to jacobs, urban planning should be organic, incremental development. she is the first advocate for tactical urbanism.

From her text, I could learn how important it is to design for real life, and not ideals. It is crucial to observe how people interact and use space, and it should be susceptible for adaptation, not perfection. on the same note, this text teaches me that human scale should be favoured, opposed to large spaces, such as superblocks, unused lawns and wide boulevards.

Embracing complexity and respecting community knowledge is key to tactical urbanism, to be able to find solutions to urban problems, that benefit all, not just the selected few. Understanding that cities are dynamic, and its design systems and buildings can evolve over time is key for sustainable design.

Another point she made was that massive clearance projects arent effective and the best investment for citie are small-scale, diverse growth projects. One principle she introduces is "the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially" (p.14). She demonstrates this with the example of North End in Boston (p.9), which I find personally very illustrative. In this "slum", where people from different backgrounds, living in all kinds of different buildings, in a city of diverse working places and commerce; the citizens were able to rehabilitate many buildings, open up new shops and promote social interactions. I personally like this example, because it shows how a bottom-up, collective approach positively impacted not only the infrastructure of the city, but also the social life. For me, as a future architect, it shows that the financial factor is not solely responsible for the planning of a successful city.

For me, the most valuable takeaway from the text, is that we, as future architects, should not only focus on how cities are built and planned, but also on how they are lived in, how people communicate with each other and interact with public spaces. Observation is a crucial part of the planning process, and we as architects aren't just designers, but we should create a bridge between citizens and planners.