Jane Jacobs and the Design of the 21St Century City

JANE JACOBS November 18-19, 2016 SYMPOSIUM Charlottesville, Virginia THE MODERNITY OF WORK AND PLACE: JANE JACOBS AND THE DESIGN OF THE 21ST CENTURY CITY 1 JANE JACOBS SYMPOSIUM THE MODERNITY OF WORK AND PLACE: JANE JACOBS AND THE DESIGN OF THE 21ST CENTURY CITY 2 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond 701 E Byrd Street Richmond, VA 23219 University of Virginia School of Architecture PO Box 400122 Charlottesville, VA 22904 Editors: Shannon McKay Suzanne Morse Moomaw Copyright © 2019. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and the University of Virginia School of Architecture. This book may be reproduced in whole or in part provided that it is: 1. For noncommercial, personal, or educational purposes only (i.e., not for private gain), and 2. Appropriately credited to its author or authors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and the University of Virginia School of Architecture. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF RICHMOND Richmond Baltimore Charlotte 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 6 Foreword 7 Introduction 8 I . CITY COMPLEXITY Cities of Strangers: What Jane Jacobs Saw Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Center for the Living City 10 Remarks on Jane Jacobs June Manning Thomas, University of Michigan 12 SYNOPSIS: Jacobs's Ideas at Work Today Kathy Galvin, City of Charlottesville 12 Jane Jacobs and the New Century George “Mac” McCarthy, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 14 Cities of Equity: Environmental Justice & the City Sheila R. Foster, Georgetown University 16 Saving Our Parks: The Grassroots Movement that Brought Jane Jacobs’s Vision into Law Margaret Haltom, Harvard Graduate School of Design 21 SYNOPSIS: Screening and Student Discussion—Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Margaret Haltom, Harvard Graduate School of Design 22 II. CITY STRUCTURE Jane Jacobs, Modernity and Knowledge Sonia Hirt, University of Georgia 26 Jane Jacobs|Toronto|2041 Mona El Khafif, University of Virginia Shannon Wright, University of Waterloo 33 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS The Failure of America’s First City Plan Maureen Brady, University of Virginia 44 SYNOPSIS: Jane Jacobs: On the Street Exhibit at University of Virginia School of Architecture Reid Saunders, Community Rebuilds, Moab, Utah Katie Lang, Neighborhood Development Services, City of Charlottesville 63 III. CITY AND NEW WORK Jane Jacobs, Credentials, Education, and Economic Growth Stuart Andreason, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta 73 Building Blocks of Economic Life Richard C. Schragger, University of Virginia 81 Assessing the Effectiveness of Urban Policies: How Do Social Interactions Influence Policy Outcomes? Santiago M. Pinto, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond 87 The Possibility of Work and Place Peter L. Laurence, Clemson University 92 CONCLUSION Jane Jacobs Redux Suzanne Morse Moomaw, University of Virginia 94 IV. APPENDIX Authors 96 Symposium Program Agenda 99 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank the sponsors of the symposium, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, University of Virginia School of Architecture, University of Virginia School of Law, and the city of Charlottesville for their support. Thanks also to Dean Ila Berman, School of Architecture; Dean Risa Golubuff, School of Law; and Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, for hosting events. We were honored to be one of the first venues for the screening of the film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City and to have the director-producer, Matt Tyrnauer, with us at the symposium. In addition, we extend our gratitude to all the speakers and moderators for creating an atmosphere of dialogue and discussion on some of the most pertinent issues of our time and to the peer reviewers for their time and talent. Much appreciation also goes to the team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, including Emily Corcoran, Rodney West and Lisa Kenney, for their review and design efforts on this compendium. Last, but not least, we thank Jane Jacobs for challenging us to think about ways to create cities that work for everybody. 6 FOREWORD On November 18-19, 2016, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond was honored to host a symposium on the work of Jane Jacobs, in partnership with the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Schools of Law and Architecture as well as the Department of Architectural History and the Community Design Research Center at the University of Virginia. Jacobs was not formally an urban planner nor an economist, but her writings — in particular, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, and Cities and the Wealth of Nations — have profoundly affected the way many economists think about urban economic issues as well as economic growth. Indeed, Jacobs played a significant role in the development of “endogenous growth theory” through her influence on, among others, Robert Lucas, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics. Lucas’s work attempts to answer the fundamental question of where ideas come from and how they are dispersed. He noted that Jacobs had helped him understand that “much of economic life is ‘creative’ in much the same way as is ‘art’ and ‘science.’” The garment, financial, diamond, and advertising districts of New York City -- the city Jacobs called home for more than thirty years and that inspired much of her written work and her activism -- were just as much intellectual centers as the city’s universities, he argued. “The specific ideas exchanged in these centers differ, of course, from those exchanged in academic circles, but the process is much the same.” Jacobs’s contributions during her long and productive life were many and varied. We hope that this volume will expand understanding of her work just as her work has helped expand many economists’ understanding of issues fundamental to their profession. Kartik B. Athreya Executive Vice President and Director of Research Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond 7 INTRODUCTION Despite having an undergraduate degree in economics, my first encounter with Jane Jacobs occurred in graduate school for urban studies and planning. I can remember thinking as I read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities for classes that this all sounds very similar to concepts discussed in my economics classes—like agglomeration versus specialization, etc.—minus the equations. When Professor Moomaw approached me in 2015 about collaborating on a symposium to commemorate the centennial of Jane Jacobs’s birth, I welcomed the opportunity. More than one-hundred people, including academics, students, policymakers, and citizens, gathered for two days in Charlottesville to explore the redesigned relationship of place, work, and making in cities and regions. This volume contains a collection of prepared remarks, previously published work and papers presented at the symposium in November 2016. The works have been organized into three sections representing central themes. Section I, entitled “City Complexity,” explores the areas of regenerating urban economic life as well as urban ecology and the resilience of the modern city. The authors show the continued relevance of Jacobs’s “eyes on the street” mantra. Concepts of equity and exclusion are also highlighted. “City Structure” is the title of Section II. Featuring works by urban planners, architects, and lawyers, this section highlights urban policy and urban resurgence from the seventeenth century in New Haven, Connecticut, to 2041 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Knowledge, scope, and scale are key elements of consideration. The third section, “City and New Work,” brings the reader back to Jacobs’s perspectives on work and place with a reframing for the twenty-first century global city. Authors discuss local economies and their limits as well as the role of networks and the rise of credentialization. The volume also contains brief synopses of events related to the symposium, including the Jane Jacobs on the Street exhibit and the Citizen Jane: Battle for the City screening. Given today’s relevance of Jacob’s ideas about cities and their need to “add new work to old” to build the twenty- first century economy, it seems only fitting to be releasing this publication on the fiftieth anniversary of Jane Jacobs’s The Economy of Cities (1969). Shannon McKay 8 I. City Complexity 9 Cities of Strangers: Today, the pace of change is dizzying. Some of her observations have to be reinterpreted and reexamined in today’s context. The ideas are applicable, What Jane Jacobs Saw but the systems and the pace of change have accelerated to the degree Roberta Brandes Gratz that interrupting that change locally, from the ground up, is the most monumental of tasks. Introduction: Our next speaker is Roberta Brandes Gratz. She is an award-winning journalist, urban critic, lecturer, and author. In 2003, in And the manifestations of that accelerated change are not obviously just collaboration with Jane Jacobs and a small group of like-minded urbanists, the killer highways or the supersized building projects. Change today comes Gratz founded the Center for the Living City to build on Jacobs’s pioneering in many different forms—some subtle and some not—but all much more work. Among her books are The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of challenging than any of us can really fathom easily. Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, 2010, and We’re Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City, 2015. Please welcome Roberta Gratz. Fox example, Jacobs observed the proliferation of suburban malls and even the emergence of urban malls. She and I talked about the ones that were – Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director, Jefferson School smartly attached to a city’s mass transit, like Eaton Center in Toronto or the African American Heritage Center, Charlottesville, Virginia old World Trade Center Mall in New York.

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