guerrilla curatorship

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To begin to get Jane Jacobs right, one must understand why she opposed urban renewal. Her opposition has generally been understood to be based on aesthetic and planning concerns. And there is no doubt that the design of public housing deeply concerned and offended Jacobs. In her view, the quintessential housing-project design of the high-rise tower set in a plaza or park defied common sense. Plazas which aren’t regularly traversed by people for a wide range of reasons—some going to work, some to the library, some to their homes—are apt to become dangerous gauntlets, as are the long corridors in high-rises, where the neighborly eyes Jacobs found watching the street in old neighborhoods are absent. The wealthy might be able to afford doormen and security patrols but, Jacobs made clear, the less affluent need the self-policing that older, unplanned neighborhoods can provide.

But the heart of Jacobs’s quarrel with the advocates of urban renewal and city planning involved much more than design considerations. In Jacobs’s view, urban renewal was simply one manifestation of a set of beliefs that threatened to smother the economic life of cities as well as level old neighborhoods. Put another way, Jacobs actually saw herself as an apostle, not an opponent, of progress, but was convinced that policies pursued in the name of economic and aesthetic improvement were actually anti-modern and would deaden the city’s economy.

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