Tech

6 ways the ‘Mother of Urban Design’ has transformed American cities

Leanna Garfield

2016-05-04T21:35:00Z

Jane Jacobs, perhaps America's most celebrated urban designer, would have turned 100 on May 4.

Considered by some to be the "mother of urban design," Jacobs believed that cities should be designed around the needs of the pedestrian.

In 1961, she published her most influential book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," which criticized urban renewal movements at the time.

Jacobs relentlessly protested against luxury developers, who threatened to plow and build highways through neighborhoods, and laid the ideological groundwork for modern city design.

Here are some of her ideas about how to design a great American city.

Jacobs believed that city streets should be vibrant and filled with pedestrians. Her ideas about successful cities formed the basis for how American cities are set up today.

A big believer in mingling, she thought that long blocks isolated city dwellers from one another. Short blocks, on the other hand, encouraged a tighter sense of community. Much of Philadelphia, for example, benefits from a grid of relatively short blocks that average between 400 to 500 feet.

4888098686_96e328d549_b — Philadelphia streets. Flickr

Source: PlanPhilly

The liveliest cities have an eclectic mix of building types that have different uses, she wrote. This idea is evident in the stretch of San Francisco apartments and storefronts in the Mission district below.

Jacobs spoke up against luxury developers and planners who wanted to bulldoze older buildings, destroy neighborhoods, and build upscale high-rises in New York City. Today, many of the buildings and homes in West Village are protected under conservation laws.

Jacobs also triumphed walkable cities. Pedestrian-only plazas in Manhattan, like the one in Herald Square below, is an example of this vision in action today.

“The point of cities is the multiplicity of choice. It is impossible to take advantage of the multiplicity of choice without being able to get around easily," Jacobs wrote in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Today, bike-friendly cities like Portland continue to build out extensive bike lane networks.

"Bicycle boulevard" on Ankeny Street in Portland, Oregon. Wikipedia Commons

100 years after her birth, many urban dwellers are living in the kind of American cities she imagined and fought for.