Jane Jacobs Chapter 22: The Kind of Problem a City Is

In her introduction to The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs makes it quite clear that there are problems with cities. Right off, she makes it clear that these problems, be that of housing developments, zoning laws, parks, or basically any other aspect of the city in this sense, are not problematic because it is in their nature to be so; they are problematic because the planners have created them to be so. She shares her experience of visiting the North End of Boston at two different times: the first when it was overrun, crowded, and dilapidated, and the second when it was thriving, busy, and welcoming. In her research of the area, she discovered that the government had not given the neighborhood any money for reconstruction, but that the people in the neighborhood had pooled their money and had changed their living experience within the city. They knocked down walls to create larger apartments, they repainted, and they opened up shops. When Jacobs spoke to a planner about the North End, he shared in the welcoming atmosphere and the joy of walking down the streets as well, but kept coming back to 'This area is a slum. Why are you in the slums? You should get out of there. It has the densest city population. Immigrants are still coming in.'

From this man's conclusion about the area, regardless of personal experience, it is quite clear that had a planner been given funds to go in, gut, and rebuild this neighborhood, it would have completely collapsed. As Jacobs mentions a bit later in the intro, the main complaint in a housing development in East Harlem, NY, was that the planners had put a piece of grass within the development, and "What good is it? They didn't ask us what we wanted." This idea here, that planners and those of a "higher educational status" than the "rest of us" built what they assumed people wanted in a city, is what Jacobs would consider the root of the city's problems.

Chapter 22, appropriately entitled "The Kind of Problem a City Is" seems almost a direct continuation of the introduction. Stemming from the roots of these problems, that planners build whatever they believe ought to be built (usually grass), wherever they believe it ought to be built, Jacobs states that we must first find out what kinds of problems cities pose.

To do so, she creates a metaphor of the ways in which city builders think and the ways in which scientists think. The three stages of this thought development are as follows:

• The ability to deal with problems of:

1. simplicity
2. disorganized complexity
3. organized complexity

With problems of simplicity, there is usually a very small number of variables (two seemed like the magic number here). These variables directly affect each other, but don't affect much else in the vicinity. All other minimal variables are disregarded.

With problems of disorganized complexity, there can be variables numbering in the millions. Though one variable may not be able to be singled out and analyzed, there are enough variables to take a somewhat accurate average of their actions and interactions. It's simply probability.

With organized complexity, the number of variables falls somewhere in the middle of disorganized complexity and simplicity. There are too many variables to simply calculate out 'if this happens to V1, then this happens to V2...', but not quite enough variables to take an accurate average. And an average is not something that is called for with organized complexity. This type of thought development deals with specifics. Everything is mapped out and analyzed, not only as an individual "organism" but also how each variable interrelates to others, and what factors are influenced by it. This thought process cannot function on probability.

Cities, then, are of an organized complexity. There are many different regions or situations that ultimately can all be interrelated and have impact on one another. Jacobs uses an example of a park, and that how much it is used depends on its location, and the types of people in that location. These types of people are living in this spot because of other factors that may have nothing to do with the park, but in the long run, the usage of the park may depend on these outside factors. Probability of the park's usage in this case would horribly fail. If a planner were to look at a park and see that it is quite populated, and that the surrounding buildings are all 7 floors high on average, he may assume that a park placed in any location with similar building height would flourish in the same way. But perhaps he didn't realize that down the street is a really good school, and behind that is an ice cream parlor, and across the street is a day care center. Maybe he didn't notice that the people in this park were mothers and children, living in the area because of these other "landmarks". Not noticing what Jacobs refers to as "unaverage" clues (which I'll touch on in a second), the planner may place a park in an area with similar housing structures, but the park will not be touched because the people dwelling here are businessmen, leaving at 8am and returning at 6pm, with absolutely no need for a park whatsoever.

That being said, the type of problem must first be identified before action can be taken. Ways in which this might be possible, are:

1. To think about processes
2. To work inductively, from particulars to the general
3. To seek for unaverage clues involving small quantities, which reveal the way larger and more "average' quantities operate

When thinking about processes, one must look at the circumstances and context in which things exist. Simply based on this, things change how they interact with society (such as the park example). Location matters as a part of process, as well. Once processes are understood, the thought pattern may then go to catalysts that cause these processes to happen, and their factors, too. Most ordinary people, that is to say, those who are not planners, usually inherently understand these processes.

By working inductively, one must understand particulars before jumping to conclusions. Immediate generalization leads to absurdities and irrational actions. Citizens also seem to understand this.

Back to the "unaverage" clues. These clues, though small as they may be, tell the true workings of a city; the reasons why a certain store does well in one neighborhood of the city but not in another, or why one street is always busy, but a similar street a few blocks away only sees tumbleweed on its busiest days. These small clues usually lead to a larger understanding about the city, but they do so in small steps of specifics (again, because the city is an of an organized complexity. These unaverage clues are the specifics that cannot be generalized). These clues are indispensable, and when overlooked, as planners will see them as statistically inconsequential, the types of absurdities that cause problems within the city tend to arise. The idea of these clues made me think of the "police boxes" here in Chicago, the cameras with the blue flashing light atop streetlamps. Though non intrusive to daily activity, and potentially overlooked by somebody trying to determine what size housing development might go across the street, they seem to me to tell something about that specific location. If the neighborhood is one where there is not really any crime, it would seem pointless to put one of these cameras up because part of its use is to act as a crime deterrent. However, when I see one, a little bell goes off telling me to be more cautious of my surroundings; there is a reason that camera was placed at this intersection.

To continue with the subject matter of planners misunderstanding a city, Jacobs refers back to her introduction regarding the Garden City and the Radiant City. Planners were using the Garden City in relation to the simple though process. They were seeing two or so variables, such as population and number of jobs, and using that as a basis to plan an entire society. Obviously there are more variables that affect how a society thrives, but in this utopia, this was all that seemed to matter. As for the Radiant City, a thought process more related to disorganized complexity was taken up, although this isn't too far off from what this "perfect" city would actually be. Because of the style of housing, the understanding of this city's workings would largely be based off of averages of population. Probability would be more acceptable here. Though this doesn't seem like such a big deal, considering 1) that these types of cities in no means took off and dominated the world and 2) they were organized with the idea that they were to be perfect and flawless, so other factors are irrelevant (where in reality they would be relevant). There was sort of a Stepford Wives ideal set upon these Garden and Radiant Cities, and everything was perfect and nothing goes wrong and everybody is happy. It really didn't matter too much that these ideals were unrealistic for the planning of an unrealistic type of city. However. Larger problems began to take place when large city planners looked toward these Utopian city plans for legitimate "advice". Large scale cities, of organized complexity, began to base their planning off of disorganized complexity or even simplicity. Population and housing became a probability numbers game, then was used to determine maybe one or two other variables, breaking down the city into groupings that it did not actually support. It is impossible to create a successful large scale city based off of anything but organized complexity. There are simply too many variables constantly changing at indeterminable times based off of interrelations that cannot be seen from the surface.

Planners would see the city, people walking in crooked lines on sidewalks (though never colliding with anybody or anything, and always making it to their destinations), as disorganized and broken, and install narrow passages for people to walk a straight line, thinking they have fixed it. Planners see disorder where there is simply an order that is not their own. That is the problem in the city.

A solution, it seems, would be to do what the people of the North End did and the people of Greenwich Village did in Robert Fishman's Revolt of the Urbs: Rober Moses and His Critics: choose the way you want to live in your space and act on it.