Jane Jacobs' "Dark Age Ahead" Insightfully Reviewed Dr. Neal Kaufman

Jane Jacobs, the prophet of modern urban planning and proponent of evolutionary design and flexible, self-sustaining and mixed-use urban spaces and bewildering mosaic of cultural windows, groups of people sunk into old or recent dark ages and downward spirals, groups in the process of climbing out, and remnants of pre-agrarian cultures, as well as remnants of declined empires. Even within cultures, mosaics and modern, ancient and dark-age cultures exist."

She shows us a potential future if we don't follow her advice because "History has repeatedly demonstrated that empires seldom seem to retain sufficient cultural self-awareness to prevent them from overreaching and overgrasping Any culture that jettisons the values that have given it competence, adaptability, and identity becomes weak and hollow. A culture can avoid that hazard only by tenaciously retaining the underlying values responsible for the cultures nature and success." Her strong words admonish us to remember what the past and the present can teach us-namely, that urban living has cultivated our culture to this point, helping to create our most vital cities.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Jacobs is at her best when discussing urban vitality and the forces that take it away. She writes, "At a given time it is hard to tell whether forces of cultural life or death are in the ascendancy. Is suburban sprawl, with it murders of communities and wastes of land, time and energy, a sign of decay? Or is rising interest in means of overcoming sprawl a sign of vigor and adaptability in North American culture? Arguably, either could turn out to be true Sprawl can become less wasteful only by being used still more intensively. If that happens, suburban sprawl will turn out to be an interim stage, a transition between land in agricultural use to land densely enough occupied to support mass transit, to form functional and inclusive communities, to reduce car dependency, and to alleviate shortages of affordable housing." Ms Jacobs' strong disdain for the car culture, urban sprawl and the destruction of the central city are as strong as ever. The question that remains unanswered is if our culture, cultivated by word of mouth traditions and customs, will be able to retain its grasp on urban values and the need for organic communities.

She summarizes all that is bad with traditional zoning dating back to ideas shaped in the early part of the 20th century including; "high ground coverages ; high density (numbers of people or number of houses per acre) ; The mingling of commercial or other work uses with residencies..." Instead she suggests we should consider the things people really care about when trying to make vibrant and renewable urban spaces; "noise from mechanical spaces; bad smells and other forms of air pollution, water pollution and toxic pollution of soil; heavy automotive through traffic and heavy local truck traffic; destruction of parks, loved buildings, woodlands, and access to sun and sky; blighting signs and illumination; transgressions against harmonious street scales." She suggests that building codes should look at the desired outcomes and create performance codes that let individuals use their creativity and ingenuity to meet the codes. This approach fosters the emergence of sustainable solutions while giving accountability to those with the responsibility for urban planning and design. Many have lamented the degradation of planning departments, which now engage more in mediation and arbitration instead of true planning. Jacobs' vision would reinstate an active role in city building for planners, which would be very much welcomed in our major metropolitan regions.

Ms Jacobs also addresses the role of families in communities and a desire to support the family's needs. She writes, " A community is a complex organism with complicated resources that grow gradually and organically. Its resources fall into three main categories:"

-" resources that all families need and that virtually none can provide for themselves.. These resources are mostly tangible. They include affordable housing... publicly funded transportation water and sewage systems, fire protection, public health and safety inspections and enforcement, schools, public libraries, larger-scale public recreation facilities, ambulances and other emergency services."

-" convenient and responsive commercial establishments, plus noncommercial (nonprofit) services initiated and maintained by volunteer citizens' groups."

-" thoroughly informal, thoroughly intangible, and probably the most important" speaking relationships among neighbors and acquaintances in addition to friends."

Ms. Jacobs stresses the importance of individuals and the effects they can have on their own destiny and the destiny of those around them. This is particularly evident when individuals are supported by others outside of the traditional family structure. She writes, "When human beings are nurtured, efficiency and economies of scale don't apply. Helping individuals become acceptable and fulfilled members of a culture takes generous individual attention to each one, usually from numerous people All cultures depend heavily on the natural redundancies to be found in their communities: varied individuals who have varied ways of fitting into the culture and contributing to it."

She challenges us to support everyone in our society when she writes, "In cultures so deteriorated that nurturing and educating are in short supply, most of the intellectual and other advantages become reserved for an elite. This is what happened in feudal Europe during the Dark Ages following Rome's collapse. Redundancy was rationed as an extravagance When a culture is rich enough and inherently complex enough to afford redundancy of nurturers, but eliminates them as an extravagance or loses their cultural services through heedlessness of what is being lost, the consequence is self-inflicted cultural genocide The key to post-agrarian wealth is the complicated task of nurturing economic diversity, opportunity, and peace without resorted to oppression. Dark Ages and spirals of decline are in prospect for agrarian cultures that can't adapt themselves to generating wealth through human ingenuity, knowledge and skills."

Ms. Jacobs' ideas are at the core of the evolutionary approach to creating and sustaining vibrant cultures and urban spaces. When mechanistic and top down planning dominates over the bottoms-up and organic growth of communities and cultures, individuals, organizations, communities and societies are destined to be unable to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances in which they exist. There are examples springing up around the country of projects that are catalyzing a cultural renewal in our urban and inner-suburban neighborhoods. It remains to be seen if our prosperity and trend towards sprawl-type patterns of development will overwhelm our inherent need for community. But, if we don't heed some of Ms. Jacobs' prophecies, then the Dark Age of which Ms. Jacobs speaks may very well be in our future.