Essay On Jane Jacobs

Superior Essays
The 1950’s and 1960’s transported the idea of urban renewal to fruition. The passage of the 1949 Housing Act, The Housing Act of 1954, and The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act demolished numerous neighborhoods of historical and social value throughout the United States. Jane Jacobs, a woman with no political or neighborhood planning background began fighting against the bulldozer mentality in New York City that sought to construct highways and skyscrapers, which displaced many individuals, particularly minority groups. While the word placemaking was not realized until the late 20th century, Jacobs initiated this movement, gaining support from residents of the city. In this project, I intend to reveal how Jane Jacobs increased support for her movement, as well as the origins of urban renewal. I also intend to understand how this anti-urban renewal movement in New York directly affected African Americans.
A plethora of material exists in reference to Jane Jacobs and urban renewal during this time, although it typically approaches the topic from an economic standpoint. Jane Jacobs wrote a large amount of data on urban renewal, her most popular work being The Death and Life of Great American Cities. This monumental source continues to provide answers for city planners and professors alike, and is highly critical of urban planning policy in the 1950’s. She challenges what is known about cities in order to present the idea that renewal is not working, comparing it to bloodletting, utilizing one quotation to profoundly prove her point, “Sick people need fortifying, not draining.” Because Jacobs work is so conceptually prolific, I will use it to outline the concepts of urban renewal as well as why it was so appealing. David Kinkela’s article entitled The Ecological Landscapes of Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson, contribute to the idea that Jacobs was an outsider in the world she was dabbling in, and her philosophy of connectivity supply a city with personality. This work also delves into the fact that Jacobs “Ignored the complicated history of race and class.” Although this point was mentioned within the article, there was little focus on it. Kinkela focused on the idea of ecology in relation to communities, which in turn ignored a large part of the problem considering that urban renewal sought to eradicate many poor neighborhoods that minorities called home. My work will build upon this idea, explaining why this is so important to the movement. Manuel Castells, a sociologist penned The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. While his work is largely about varying urban social movements within the United States, he dedicates a chapter to urban renewal specifically, stating that it sprung from other movements of the time. He states that the anti-urban renewal movement is much more than “The poor fighting back at the establishment,” and examines the varying layers of the movement itself, primarily the riots that took place within urban ghettos. Castells easily translates urban renewal to an African American issue through tables and Alinsky ideology. While his tables are helpful, it is difficult to grasp the role of African Americans in the urban renewal movement. My work will put the two together in a more understandable way. Alice Sparberg Alexiou wrote Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary; however, her work has been criticized due to its tendency to elevate her status rather than be objective.
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It details Jacobs life from her beginnings in Scranton to her move to New York and finally to Toronto. Alexiou’s work reads more like a biography, leaving little room for historical context; however, the lengthy background she gives seems to point to the fact that Jacob’s entire life has led her to activism. While Jacobs background is important to her story, my focus is on her activism itself. Keeping Jane Jacobs as a person is integral to her activism because she was not a super hero and looking at her movement objectively is essential to understand the entire story. Jane Jacobs was active in promoting her ideas through written form, thus I will utilize her books, as well as newspaper articles she has written. Using sources she wrote will enable me to clearly comprehend her point of view, and the motives that propelled her movement forward. Her

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