The Death and Life of great American cities: Envisioning cities as inclusive, diverse and safe haven

The book ‘The Death and Life of great American cities’ by Jane Jacobs, published in 1961, critically examines the orthodox planning principles practiced by Planners in America and attributes the death of thriving neighborhoods to the same. The book was triggered by the impending danger of the death of various American cities owing to skewed priorities and blind following of orthodox planning theories by planners. The resultant was the formation of Unsafe, sterile and dull neighborhoods. Jacobs, in her book talks about various aspects of a city that if planned in a certain way would avoid the situation mentioned earlier.

Jacobs makes comparisons of planned neighborhoods and organic settlements wherein she presents her observations of planned, homogeneous communities as being sterile and non-expressive, often leading to the slow decay of such communities as opposed to mixed use, diverse communities that are thriving neighborhoods that live for a long time. Comparisons could be drawn to the contemporary dwelling designs in India wherein gated communities and high rises have become the current trend. These look very attractive from afar, but the larger negative implications of these are many. The comparison between the isolated plush high rises of Malabar hills and the thriving low rise heritage neighborhood of Gamdevi in Mumbai highlight the very fact that safe and vibrant havens are required to be closer to the ground than farther away.

An important aspect that Jacobs throws light upon is the importance of streets and the sidewalk in any city. She says that streets must be diverse spaces with variety so as to increase the ‘Eyes on the street’ and escalate the chances of citizen patrolling. The presence of diverse streets increases acquaintances and ultimately the sense of ownership among the citizens. An example of an initiative of making streets vibrant and open to more constructive interaction among the citizens is ‘Equal streets’ in Bandra, Mumbai. Every Sunday, half of this street is completely closed for vehicles and opened out with different activities and events for pedestrians. Such initiatives have to be taken in a makeshift manner because the intrinsic planning that facilitates this kind of interaction is inherently missing in contemporary city planning.

Another aspect that Jacobs describes as the sign of a dying city is increased number of cars. Increasingly cities are being designed with the priority given to automobiles rather than people. Le Corbusier’s ‘Towards a new architecture’ also highlights the importance of automobiles and infrastructure to support them as opposed to the emphasis on people. An example of how cars are being prioritized can be seen In Mumbai, wherein a proposal of a Coastal road was floated, that would facilitate cars to reach from North Mumbai to South Mumbai in a very short time via an uninterrupted road along the coast.

The myth of slums being detrimental to the growth of a city has also been illustrated by Jacobs by the way of an example of a ‘Slum’ in Boston, ‘The North End’.  However she says that it was more thriving as a neighborhood than the posh, high income neighborhoods in Boston, because of the very fact that it was diverse.  Dharavi, in Mumbai is a squatter settlement that is constantly being targeted for redevelopment by the government. But the truth is, Dharavi has grown organically as a mix of work and living spaces by the residents and is seeing constant renewal. The need for open ended, home-grown housing settlements has thus come into the picture, somewhat very much like the example of the ‘Aranya housing project’ in Indore by architect B.V Doshi that rehabilitated slums to a similar organic typology.

The book is actually a fresh outlook at what constitutes the ideal city. Jacobs highlights the fact that the importance of not just visual order, but the way each street nook works must be taken into consideration by city planners, and that orthodox planning principles must be constantly questioned by examining the micro narratives of any space.