Listen to my Interview with KFAI's Tom O'Connell on Jane Jacobs, Saint Paul Street Safety, and Twin Cities' Housing

I've been a long-time on-and-off volunteer with Twin Cities' priceless gem of a community radio station, KFAI, for well over ten years. We are so lucky to have KFAI as part of the Twin Cities, offering conversations, music, and culture that's simply not available anywhere else.

Their local talk programming is a great example. As MPR has -- for better and worse -- adopted more of a state and national focus over the years, there is a huge radio vacuum around local news and issues. KFAI's often excellent, volunteer-run news programming is a wonderful and under-appreciated resource. (Partly that's because there is so little capacity at KFAI to disseminate and repackage their content over the internet.)

This last Monday I spent an hour discussing Twin Cities' urban geography issues on Truth To Tell-KFAI with Tom O'Connell, Rico Morales, and Josh Lamere (sp?).

(Full disclosure: I used to be the volunteer engineer for the program ten years ago when Andy Driscoll was the host, and then I served on the board of CivicMediaMinnesota, the non-profit that runs the program, for many years.)

Tom and I chatted about a lot of topics I've been writing and thinking about lately, including the 4-3 "test diet" on Maryland, Jane Jacobs' legacy, an update on the Lowry Grove issue, the tension between aging and urbanism, anything else we could think of.

Here's the link to the TruthtoTell page. Listen at your leisure.

[Kids sitting on things outside the KFAI entrance in Minneapolis/Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.]

PS. Apologies for the heavy breathing! Also, the phones weren't working so nobody was really able to call in...

Join me Friday for a Jane Jacobs Evening: A Walk, Talk, and Screening of a New Film "Citizen Jane"

[Jacobs in Toronto in the 1970s.]

It's no exaggeration to say that this blog, and my entire personality, would not exist without Jane Jacobs. My interest in sidewalks came directly out of picking up her masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and digesting it thoroughly. I read it more than once, and it's been enlightening every time.

Not only was her book the right book at the right time for American urbanism, it was the right book at the right time for me personally. I'd just moved back to Saint Paul from living (and walking everywhere) in New York City. Jacobs' analysis has aged well in many ways, and it's a real eye opener for someone who has never though critically about urban design before.

Anyway, I've read the rest of Jacobs' curious books, and re-read Death and Life many times since, assigning it in just about every one of my classes. That's why I'm thrilled to participate in Preserve Minneapolis' event tomorrow celebrating Jacobs life and work, and a new film in her honor.

I haven't yet seen the film and, though I'm always skeptical about panegyric biopics, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Hosted by Preserve Minneapolis, we'll be walking from Buzza lofts along the Greenway in Uptown over to the Lagoon theater, and than having a brief discussion after the film about Jacobs' work and legacy.

[Facebook link is here.]

[Jacobs at the Whitehorse Tavern in New York City. Fun fact: when James Howard Kunstler interviewed her, she annoyed him because she just wanted to drink beer instead of talk.]

Here's a description of the film:

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City is coming to Minneapolis and Preserve Minneapolis is ready!

Join us on Friday May 12 to celebrate Jane Jacobs and the release of this important film. We will begin the evening with socializing at Buzza Lofts of Uptown, discussing the key tenets of Jane's philosophy. We'll then take part in a Jane's Walk -- a citizen-led exploration with a focus on collective story-sharing and observation to explore the unique culture of the neighborhood. 

The Walk will bring us to Lagoon Cinema just in time to catch the film premiere. Tickets for the film $10 and $7 for those over age 65.

So who was Jane Jacobs?

In 1960 Jane's book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities. 

Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city. This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. 

Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today though the lens of one of its greatest champions.

See you then!

[See also: In Defense of the Pedal Pub (and Jacobs' homage to late-night street bagpipers), Dinkytown and the Need for Old Buildings (on Jacobs, preservation, and organic urban space), RIP Jane Jacobs (after she died in '06), Development v. Destruction, and Principles of Sidewalkery: Density (on the need for density).]

 

Dinkytown and the Need for Old Buildings

In the midst of last week's Dinkytown mess, I was reminded again of Jane Jacobs. Check out this comment from my Streets.mn rant about the Dinkytown situation:

It’s fascinating that no one is really talking about the end result of this process – square footage cost for both commercial and residential renters. I hear most often that it’s local business that is being hurt by not developing with projects as the one above. Yet, at last week’s Z&P meeting Laurel Bauer herself said she wouldn’t move back into the new building because the rent would be way too high. She was charging her renters $22/sq ft; Opus states their rent would be at least in the low-30s – so let’s say $32/sq ft. What kind of local businesses can afford that rent? High-end services. ...

This gets to the economic heart of the matter. The three businesses displaced by the new development were being vastly undercharged in rent compared to what the market would bear. Because of its limited size and huge pedestrian population, demand for space in Dinkytown is very high. Old quirky shops like the old Purple Onion, the old Dinkytowner, everything that was in the old Dinkydome have all been replaced by businesses willing to pay a lot more in rent. It's hard to stop that kind of economic pressure.


Why Old Buildings Foster Diversity 

Just like Phyllis Kahn, diversity was Jane Jacobs mantra. But by "diversity," Jacobs did not simply mean surface levels of ethnic or cultural diversity. Rather she was describing a diversity of ways of living. Imagine all the things that lie between skateboarding and power lunches, all the kinds of places that fall between fancy cafés and dive bars.

Jacobs loved cities where many different kinds of people rubbed shoulders. She loved tattoo parlors next to spas, rows of surly booksellers, strange juxtapositions. Diversity meant people with different interests sharing space, people of different ages, with different hobbies, coming from different social classes, and offering a wide range of tempos of everyday life. She called this the "urban ballet," everything between the night owl and the early bird, and it was this endless organized chaos that Jacobs defended.

In other words, to simply have density -- tall buildings stacked as high as possible -- was not enough for Jacobs. She hated lower Manhattan, then the tallest, most skyscraper-laden part of New York city, because it was dominated by office workers and died each night after 6 PM.

This is why old buildings are so important. Jacobs writings on this issue are worth reading at length. She has a whole chapter in Death and Life called "The Need for Old Buildings," which gets right to the heart of the concerns about the Opus development. Here's the pertinent quote:

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. But old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation -- although these make fine ingredients -- but also a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings.

If a city area has only new buildings, the enterprises that can exist there are automatically limited to those that can support the high costs of new construction...

...Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings; good bookstores and antique dealers seldom do. Well-subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. But the informal feeders of the arts -- studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and a table can absorb uneconomic discussions -- these go into old buildings. Perhaps more significant, hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighborhoods, and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfuly in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction.

Balancing these two forces, density and diversity, was Jacobs' prescription for cities. You can feel the desperation in her voice, even when writing in the late '50s Greenwich Village. Cities need run down areas, old worn out buildings, and (hell) even strip malls. These old shopworn spaces provide habitat for the wide range of low-overhead operators, entrepreneurs, immigrants, and artists that are the real creative force in the city.

Yet actually hanging on to old buildings is maddeningly difficult because cities (for good economic reasons) are continually chasing the holy grail of tax revenue. The cycle of gentrification is continually seeking out spaces where there's a mismatch between demand and rents, between shoddy old buildings and the potential for growth. These kinds of neighborhoods are continually struggling to survive, and in some places, it seems like they've all but disappeared.

It's a delicate balance between density and diversity. We can't simply jerk our knees and cry foul each time an old building is replaced. (Well, we can... In fact, it can be quite fun, but it doesn't really get us anywhere.) Meanwhile, fostering old buildings by regulation, historic preservation, or zoning code often backfires.

My personal approach is to only spend money at local businesses, to avoid chains like the plague, to seek out quirky places and spend as much time as possible with them. If everyone did the same, maybe our old buildings would survive a bit longer. If we want our cities to grow, to continue to generate diversity, I don't really see what else can be done...

Why Neighborhoods Need Bricks and Mortar

[Glassware in the window of Practical Goods.]

One of my favorite shops in all of St Paul is called Practical Goods on Randolph Avenue. It’s a thrift store type of thing that sells lots of antique-y, vintage, and thrift type of stuff, only the woman who runs it, Wendy, has a particular emphasis on “material culture.” She requires that everything there be actually useful in your everyday life, and will happily explain to you, for example, the difference between a corn pot, a soup pot, and a stock pot, why rubber boots are great for puddles, or how to use a mill-style coffee grinder.

If Practical Goods is open, Wendy will be sitting at her desk and available to chat. And sometimes, especially on slow days, when you buy something she’ll give you her flier about why supporting small businesses is good for neighborhoods:

[Wendy's flier.]

Wendy’s point here is that internet commerce is bad for cities. This is something I’ve heard before (except in Seattle). Each year, more and more retail activity shifts online, away from actual “bricks and mortar” stores. This is one of the big reasons why Best Buy’s stock has been going down the toilet, and why Target is spending so much energy trying to reduce “showrooming.” Ask anyone who sells used books or antiques, and that same problem is plaguing local old stuff merchants as well.

Sure, there are lots of great reasons to shop at Practical Goods. But right now I’m interested in the part of her flier that points to urban design issues, the intangible benefits that an actual store provides within the city. Foremost on this list is tax base for the city, but Wendy also adds in public bathroom. (It’s a good one, too.)

I’d make a few more additions to the list:

Eyes on the street -- Jane Jacobs' idea that shopkeepers, snoops, and just-plain-folks-with-eyes make a neighborhood safer and more stable by being there, aware and able to call out or call the police, or just to help people if they need anything or something crazy occurs. Sitting as she does each day in her shop with the window before her, Wendy is a great example of a eyes on the street, and probably does a lot to improve the atmosphere of Randolph Avenue.


Interesting window displays, sidewalk wares -- as I mentioned recently, having interesting windows and things out on the sidewalk makes walking worthwhile. Well, Wendy's shop is one of the best! Each day she puts out a series of practical goods on the sidewalk, things like rakes and a rainbow of rubber boots lined up near the street tree. Her windows are wonders, and put smiles on faces of anyone with feet.

Walkable neighborhood node -- sidewalks are almost useless unless there's somewhere to walk. We need more mixed-use stores in our neighborhoods, more little shops like Practical Goods where you can buy something you might need like a pair of moccasins or a navy teapot.

Listen up, my fellow generation! Everything can’t go online. Imagine a Twin Cities without antique stores or bookstores or record shops. I’m fine with everyone shopping online instead of at exploitative corporate big boxes (ahem - Trader Joe’s). But if you’re going online to buy skillets or 45s or local music instead of at Practical Goods or Hymie’s or the Electric Fetus just to save a few dollars, why not move out to Blaine, cut out the middleman, and speed up the urban lobotomy?

Comparing the Small Blocks of the Midwest and the Northwest

Curiously, Jane Jacobs devotes a chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities to a relatively obscure topic: the “need for small blocks” in cities. Using Manhattan’s Upper West and Upper East sides as examples, Jacobs argues that long blocks make for “self-isolating streets” that restrict pedestrian choice and curtail economic activity throughout urban neighborhoods.

Jacobs’ small block advice crossed my mind on a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. At first glance, my hometown of Minneapolis has a lot of similarities with Portland, particularly in its housing stock, age of development, density and mixed-use characteristics. Yet many older neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest have smaller block sizes that you will find in the Midwest. For example, the average block size in Southeast Portland or Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood is less than 100 meters square, whereas most of the blocks in South Minneapolis or Chicago’s North Side are nearly twice as large. While walking through any of these neighborhoods, block size is not necessarily something you might notice, I think that the size difference has a few subtle effects.

In these cities, block size seems to affect traffic calming and walkability. In other words, the size of city blocks impacts the degree of pedestrian accessibility and choice. Smaller blocks increase the ratio of public street to private developed space, and create a “finer mesh circulation pattern” in urban neighborhoods (Siksna 1997). For example, Seattle’s Capitol Hill area and Portland’s Southeast neighborhoods suggest how small blocks can lead to walkable urban landscapes. On the other hand, the commercial streets of South Minneapolis, seem to be a bit less pedestrian friendly because of their larger size. With fewer intersections, cars can travel a bit faster. Likewise, there are fewer street corners, so that pedestrians have fewer choices about which path to choose.

Jacobs’ concerns about block size were primarily about the generation of diversity, about how to generate new forms of economic activity. She argued that block size had a large impact on the potential pedestrian populations for businesses, and that smaller block sizes made for more integrated circulation patterns. While Jacobs’ ideas are appropriate for a place like Manhattan, with its contiguous mixed-use fabric, in the streetcar neighborhoods of Seattle, Portland or Minneapolis block size is not really about generating economic activity. Instead, it forms an almost atmospheric part of the urban landscape. It is worth stopping and noticing how these differences in layout have fostered some of the most vibrant neighborhoods in US cities. The Northwest should be grateful for its legacy of small, walkable blocks.

[The relative block size patterns of residential neighborhoods in four cities.]

References:

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House

Siksna, A. (1997). “The effects of block size and form in North American and Australian city centres.” Urban Morphology. 1. Pp. 19 – 33.

Jane Jacobs: Development v. Destruction

[img of Pakistani schoolchildren -- fm. NYT]

One of the NYT opinion columns today, from Nicholas Kristof, is a lovely look at the comparative costs and benefits of schools v. missiles in US - Pakistani foreign policy. It asks whether or not it's more effective to fight against or empower the villages and tribal areas of Central Asia. Tough question!

This is the money quote:

Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.

(Of course, is it worth wondering how important it may be that the half a million dollars goes into the "US economy": the coffers of Raytheon, KBR, and Lockheed. The school, on the other hand, just saves us the bother of producing such fine weapon systems.)

The story reminded me of some of the lessons from the book I'm reading right now, Jane Jacobs' The Nature of Economies.

In her weird way, Jacobs is trying to describe alternative methods of economic development, based, strangely enough, on her arguments about city sidewalks. She argues that economic activity follows the same rules as ecological growth, developing increasingly complex chains of energy usage and interdependencies. Whether or not you're talking about co-dependent relationships in a ecosystem, or the kinds of mutually beneficial relationships that exist between firms in cities, each reflects basic rules of creativity that stem from diverse uses of natural and human resources.

So in this model, the missile represents capital entering the local economy, making an "impact", and leaving no economic trace beyond increased demand for anti-missile systems, military training, AK-47s, etc.

The school represents investments in human capital like literacy, allowing for a far broader types of resource uses in the future. Jacobs' ideas seem to be increasingly accurate, particularly meshing with ideas like microlending. And she's particularly interested in how these sorts of metrics can be applied to cities, which she believed were localized stockpiles of human capital and interconnected, webs of relationships that were "alive" with the ability to adapt, change, and develop new kinds of economic activity.