Jane Jacobs: Some Myths About Diversity

I cobbled this post out of common objections that Jane Jacobs refuted. It's not really a complete post, but since I haven't worked on it for a while, I'm just going to post it.

Mixed Uses Look Ugly

Sameness looks monotonous, which, though orderly, is dull. She claims that there is still a desire among homogenous uses to appear different, and that it can manifest itself in weird contrived features. So homogenous uses are either depressingly monotonous or "vulgarly chaotic." Admittedly I find this difficult to defend from either side, but I think her point is that mixed uses are not inherently ugly, and that homogenous uses are not inherently beautiful.


Mixed Uses Cause Traffic Congestion

"Traffic Congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves." 

I could just say, "Look at Peru's strip," where single uses cause traffic congestion. Nobody can really get there, except by car (I've walked it a few times, but it is not fun). The old downtowns are easily reachable by foot or bike. Homogenous uses create a need for automobiles by increasing the distance to go in order to reach other uses. Human lives are so entwined between uses that their physical separation does not make sense. Trips would be shorter with mixed uses. People might even be able to walk. Walking takes up much less space than driving. It would take far more pedestrians to create the perceived amount of vehicular traffic that exists now.

Mixed Uses Invite Ruinious Uses

"Successful city districts are never dotted with junk yards, but that is not why these districts are successful. It is the other way around. They lack junk yards because they are successful."

Ruinous uses are often space-consuming, low economic uses. Vital city districts raise property values and cultivate more profitable, space intensive uses. As far as smoky manufacturing goes, the "air doesn't know about zoning boundaries." Zoning is not a good way to combat pollution, there are other, much more effective tools for that. She concludes that few legal uses "can harm a city district as much as the lack of diversity harms it."

However she does mention a few uses that are harmful: parking lots, trucking depots, gas stations, and other enterprises that, on certain streets, have the wrong scale. The first few are easy to understand, they contort space and disorganize streets, because they are so visually dominating.

I think a lot of her objections have to do with rules being made for situations where rules don't quite belong. Somebody's idea of a good idea was codified and applied to an entire municipality and it should just have been a guideline or a good idea for those that want it to take it and those that don't to leave it.  Why have a standardized environment? It would be boring.