INDUSTRY NEWS
BACK TO THE FUTURE
While we celebrate the increasing emphasis developers are placing on mixed-use
precincts, and acknowledge that this is the way of the future, it’s nothing new. Cities
evolved as mixed-use precincts.
I
n the mid-20th century, when large stretches of New York were
being razed to the ground to make way for its now ubiquitous
high-rise buildings and extensive park-lined highways,
visionary Jane Jacobs was arguing for organic, people-centred
development that maintains the sense of community and
liveliness that make cities homely, safe and functional.
Dismissed by the City as ‘a bunch of mothers’ in the 1960s, when
she led a group of citizens in protest against the building of a 10-
lane highway through a historic neighbourhood, Jacobs was a writer
by profession and, yes, a protective mother, whose vision for cities
is still growing in influence half a century later. She believed that, in
order for city planners to develop planning principles and practices
that promote social and economic vitality, it is essential that they
understand how cities actually work rather than impose concepts of
how they think cities ought to work.
In a Fortune magazine article from 1958, she urged developers to
look to the people who are using downtown to determine how to plan
for it, referring to the streets as a nervous system that ‘communicates
the flavor, the feel, the sights’.
She writes:
Users of downtown know very well that downtown
needs not fewer streets, but more, especially for
pedestrians. They are constantly making new, extra
paths for themselves, through mid-block lobbies
of buildings, block-through stores and banks, even
parking lots and alleys. Some of the builders of
downtown know this too, and rent space along their
hidden streets.
Jacobs said it was important for city planning to foster a sense of
community, and nurture the things that give real value to cities,
such as the mix of shops, cafés and bars with residences, commerce
and small industry, and that keep streets lively throughout the day.
‘Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos.
On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form
of order,’ she explained in 1961 in her book, The Death and Life
of Great American Cities. She promoted mixed-use development,
community-centred planning and local economic development.
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