In 1961, Jane Jacobs wrote Death and Life in America's Great Cities, which changed the way people think about cities and urban life. In the book, she affectionately depicts the humane "sidewalk ballet" of the owners of small neighborhood shops on Hudson Street in New York, so as to tell everyone that this is what city life should look like.
Since the publication of Death and Life in America's Great Cities, Jane Jacobs has been gradually "deified" as the "godmother" of urban civilization, and her ideas about urban diversity have been repeatedly discussed, even with a hint of political correctness or at least academic correctness. Unlike the usual exaggeration of the protagonist's exploits in general biographies, Guard Life: The Biography of Jane Jacobs (hereinafter referred to as "Guard Life") respects and highlights the criticism and opposition voices, and points out the contradictions between Jane Jacobs and the planning academic community on urban issues: In the United States in the 1950s, did you choose a sunny, clean, green suburban life, or a noisy, chaotic, and vibrant urban life? Behind this contradiction lies a grander question: Who does the city really belong to?
Written by | Xu Teng (Ph.D. in Architecture, Tsinghua University)
Guard Life: A Biography of Jane Jacobs, by Robert Canigar, Translator: Lin Xinru, Edition: Guangqi Bookstore| Shanghai People's Publishing Group, January 2022.
Contradiction and loss: having a new house, but losing life
When it comes to reflections on modernity, Chaplin's film Modern Times is a classic case. The basis of modernization is mechanized large-scale production, which is intended to liberate human productive forces, but the workers in the film are not liberated in the assembly line production mode, but are enslaved by machines. Capitalism controls society at the rhythm of machines, and individuals can only obey and make sacrifices, and there is no life to work, and there is no work if they want to live, which is a typical feature of modernity.
Our urban spaces often encounter such contradictions and losses. In the first half of the 20th century, New York's East Harlem district planned to build a new residential complex for 50,000 people at the cost of demolishing 1,000 shops. City expert Jane Jacobs is grateful for this, saying: "One supermarket is enough to replace thirty delicatessens, fruit stands, grocery stores and butchers in the neighborhood... But it can't replace thirty store owners, not even one. "People have new houses, but they also lose their lives.
Modern Times was released on February 25, 1936, when Jane Jacobs was 20 years old and had just moved to New York less than two years ago, where Jane Jacobs lived for the next 32 years. She lived through the Great Depression in the United States, the professional emancipation of women in World War II, and the postwar urban renewal, the rise of modernism in the United States. In early 1955, Jane Jacobs was serving as editor of the Architecture Forum, and after following the planner Edmund Bacon's tour of the fruits of Philadelphia's renovation, she became acutely aware that the dramatic scenes and magnificent landscapes constructed by modernism belonged only to a narrow aesthetic category. Like the destruction of individual lives by machines, the prevailing modern urban planning ideas at the time defined many cluttered but vibrant urban precincts as hopeless slums, and thus eliminated them as a whole. But instead of sacrificing the old, the new neighborhood loses its most important thing about the city— its vitality.
Stills from the movie "Modern Times".
In 1956, she first fully expounded the modern urban operation rules she summarized from the "scale of human nature" in a speech at Harvard University, which greatly shocked the academic community and gave her the opportunity to collect her thoughts into a monograph, "Death and Life in American Big Cities". In the book, she affectionately depicts the humane "sidewalk ballet" of the owners of small neighborhood shops on Hudson Street in New York, so as to tell everyone that this is what city life should look like. After the book came out, Jane Jacobs quickly became the most prestigious opinion leader in the urban field.
Jane Jacobs was admired for her courage and intellectual speech, and gradually she became a symbol, a symbol, more like a must-remember entry for urban planning professionals. And the real Jane Jacobs doesn't have any superficial advantages that are proud enough to boost public prestige, she's not pretty, she doesn't like to dress up, she doesn't get any major public recognition before the age of 45, why are so many people fascinated by her?
Merit and Fault: The Return from "Divine Personality" to "Personality"
From the perspective of historical research, biography is usually not much of a reliable source of research. Because one of the main ways to write a biography is to deliberately string together some accidental events in the protagonist's life, and thus write a sense of fatalism like the perspective of God: "Many years ago, this matter had a sign! "'Guard Life' is also difficult to avoid. The book mentions that Jane Jacobs was a "thorn head" from an early age, full of distrust and hatred for the entire school years. After dropping out of school, she aspired to become a writer, focusing on the quirky details and willing to spend energy on the things she loved, trying to make every article convey a realistic street atmosphere. She loves Sheridan Square outside of Manhattan and off the sightseeing map, and is fascinated by living in the midst of all the struggles, pains, and joys that unfold. She worked for the Wartime Intelligence Service during World War II, showcasing American achievements through ingenious editing and promoting the American way of life for America magazine during the Cold War.
Faced with the Soviet Union's questioning of the favelas in the United States, she began to pay deep attention to the problem of living in the United States and began to think: What is the real good life? After leaving America, she joined architecture forums, where she began to question current planning and architectural practices with her deep love of the subject, and eventually wrote masterpieces such as Death and Life in America's Great Cities. Everything she did was preparing meals, caring for children, assembling Easter baskets, and tending the garden, and every letter she wrote, every book she honed, every speech she spoke at a public rally took place in the context of her life as a girl, a woman, a wife, and a mother. Jane Jacobs wasn't a housewife, but she didn't live a man's life either, she was a very different type and should be looked at.
Death and Life in America's Great Cities, by Jane Jacobs, translated by KingHengshan, Translated by Forest Press, July 2020.
However, instead of the usual exaggeration of the protagonist's exploits in general biographies, "Guard Life" devotes a chapter to "the defects of hardware" to discuss Jane Jacobs's point of view. Since the publication of Death and Life in America's Great Cities, Jane Jacobs has been gradually "deified" as the "godmother" of urban civilization, and her ideas about urban diversity have been repeatedly discussed, even with a hint of political correctness or at least academic correctness. This book is certainly an immortal monument erected by Jane Jacobs, but no matter how wonderful it is, it can only be regarded as the words of Jane Jacobs. Therefore, it is remarkable that in "Guard Life", the author Robert Caniger also includes the criticism of Jane Jacobs by relevant people and gives a sincere discussion.
What Jane Jacobs criticized most was the narrowness of her views, with urban planner Kevin Lynch describing Jane Jacobs' Death and Life in America's Great Cities as "a prominent and distorted book" and a strong demand for "some very limited urban environment." In response to Jane Jacobs' overemphasis on things like buildings and streets that can shape people, sociologist Herbert Gans argues that "Jane Jacobs ignores the social, cultural, and economic factors that bring vitality or cause boredom, causing her to ignore the deeper roots of urban problems" and that "Jane Jacobs, as a middle-class person, romantically projects the west village, which is dominated by the working class, ignoring the dark side of the lives of low- and middle-income people." An opinion piece in the Journal of the American Association of Planners further pointed out: "She did not accept the existence of other urban styles that were not like her ideals, nor did she agree that they were worth yearning for, and thus fell into the kind of single mode of thinking that she herself often condemned." At times, Jane Jacobs seemed too eager to write off traditional academic or professional practice as worthless or worse. It is through respect for these critical and dissenting voices that Guard Life completes Jane Jacobs's return from "divinity" to "personality".
Reflection and questioning: Who are we busy with?
"Guard Life" points out the contradiction between Jane Jacobs and the planning academic community on the urban problem: In the United States in the 1950s, did you choose a suburban life with bright sunshine, fresh air and vast greenery, or a noisy, chaotic, and vibrant urban life? Behind this contradiction lies a grander question: Who does the city really belong to? Jane Jacobs was adamantly on the side of the people, working to justify a non-mainstream way of life that was deeply rooted in the city. But unfortunately, our world did not move forward as Jacobs envisioned, and single willpower is still the main force controlling the city. Because, as early as the industrial revolution, the underlying logic of the city has undergone a fundamental change. Cities before the Industrial Revolution were only a state of political settlement, while cities after the Industrial Revolution began to become instruments of capital appreciation. Political settlements emphasize the order of dignity and inferiority. Capital appreciation places a strong emphasis on turnover efficiency, and people are forced to become involved in a large and abstract modern system, and even political leaders often have nowhere to escape. Who are we really busy for? This became the bigger myth of modernity.
Stills from the movie Metropolis.
Sixty years after the publication of Death and Life in America's Great Cities, the penetration of modern urban life with the help of the Internet as a new tool has become more and more thorough. At this time, "Guard Life" was completely new, which was tantamount to re-illuminating this dim light in the fog. Jane Jacobs's most outstanding contribution was to change people's thinking and strategies for observing cities, and to this day, observing daily life is still a great way to understand and reflect on cities. Jane Jacobs has specifically discussed neighborhood safety, emphasizing that the mixture of people can form an "eye of safety". If she is still alive and sees the cameras all over the street, I don't know what evaluation she will make? And the new public life that modern people have constructed on social media, will Jacobs be as interested in the non-virtual social networking of her time?
The author | Xu Teng
Editors| Qingqingzi and Luo Dong
Proofreading | Xue Jingning