If the conditions for generating city diversity can be introduced into a neighborhood while it is a slum, and if any indications of unslumming are encouraged rather than thwarted, I believe there is no reason that any slum need be perpetual. “Unslumming and slumming, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p273)

It might seem like I’m working backward through The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I’ve only blogged about one of the conditions for city diversity, according to Jacobs:

1. Need for primary mixed uses
2. Need for small blocks
3. Need for aged buildings (RE: Norwood - Part 1 & Part 2)
4. Need for concentration

However, a week ago I posted about “The Slumming of West Norwood.” I really want to talk about the unslumming of West Norwood.

4,602 people lived in census tract 255, according to the 2000 US Census.

While I’m sure to come back to all of the conditions for city diversity in more detail, I’ll quickly cover the four conditions as applied to west Norwood.

1 - Primary mixed uses - I ended the post on the slumming of west Norwood with a hopeful note, linking to the websites about the newer uses in three of the buildings at the intersection of Carter and Mills:

• 1801 Mills
• Speckled Bird Cafe
• Vineyard Central

Only one corner lacks a non-residential use, though the building could still host a commercial use in the future. Unfortunately, all three uses have limited hours. Most automobile traffic - great for commercial uses for visibility and convenience - bypasses this intersection via Sherman. There are other factors at play concerning the mix of uses that will have to wait for another post.

2 - Small blocks - No matter what the city fathers attempted through the urban renewal of the early 1960s, little of what they did affected the size of the city blocks.

3 - Aged buildings - I’ve covered Norwood’s preponderance of old buildings. They are not lacking in this area. The case I made was that it should not be seen as a deficiency. Norwood does lack a mix of newer buildings, though there are some closer to the historic core, including a revamped Surrey Square, and on the east side of Norwood (closer to richer Cincinnati suburbs, such as Hyde Park).

4 - Concentration - In the census tract covering this portion of West Norwood, the population density is just shy of 15 people per acre (2000 US Census). That’s well above many suburban areas, but far, far shy of, say, New York City.

Jacobs describes the process of slumming:

[D]ull, dark, undiverse are the streets in which [slums] typically form. “Unslumming and slumming, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p274)

The process of unslumming is a reverse of the process of slumming. Break one link, Jacobs states:

The key link in a perpetual slum is that too many people move out of it too fast—and in the meantime dream of getting out. “Unslumming and slumming, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p271)

I met people who are choosing to move to this part of Norwood. I heard stories of their investment and improvements, and how their investment has encouraged others to reinvest in more area properties. Let’s hope that continued commercial vitality at the corner of Mills and Carter is an unaverage clue and helps provide the diversity necessary for continued unslumming.

Conventional planning approaches to slums and slum dwellers are thoroughly paternalistic. The trouble with paternalists is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so. “Unslumming and Slumming,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p271)

 

The Onion: Detroit Mayor Throws First Brick In Glass-Breaking Ceremony For New Slum 05.12.09 Jane Jacobs’ view of conventional slum fighting - as superficial and potentially more harmful than inaction - seems to be evident in this satire from The Onion. What I mean is that much of the superficial wrangling with slums might as well be like what is depicted here.

Governments have had a role in slum creation.

Obviously, it hasn’t been as direct as this, but Jacobs is keen to rest on this point:

To overcome slums, we must regard slum dwellers as people capable of understanding and acting upon their own self-interests. “Unslumming and Slumming,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p271)

In other words, don’t blame “them” either.

The most cutting fake point from The Onion:

“As far as giant ‘f…-yous’ from the city go, I’m a little underwhelmed,” said Danica Michaels, a single mother of four young children. “This is nothing compared to the giant interstate they built through my neighborhood last year.”

 We’ll take a look at unslumming tomorrow.

The processes that occur in cities are not arcane, capable of being understood only by experts. “The kind of problem a city is,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p441)

If you google Jay Forrester of MIT, you might come across his connection to the computer game, SimCity. In 1969, he added Urban Dynamics to his canon on system dynamics. It’s all about modeling feedback loops, coefficients, and the like. I found an example in the creative commons concerning life insurance sales:

It’s a bit much, eh?

These are NOT the kind of processes to which Jacobs is referring. Forrester tacks on an 84 page appendix to 128 pages just to explain the model in further detail - truly arcane. The stuff for experts - in math, not cities.

SimCity works well with Forrester’s model because it dumbs the city down: the system simplified. If you want to insult a city planner, reduce their job to that game. It’s like telling a guitarist that their job is as simple as playing Guitar Hero.

Some of the parameters Forrester must hold constant in his model are fundamental parts of urban processes, such as technological innovation. Think of what changes in elevator technology did to building heights, the air conditioner, the car… Short of a crystal ball for anticipating future change, there’s no way to completely model a complex system like the city.

While you might not be a guitar expert, given a few minutes, you could probably become expert in a single chord. The processes Jacobs wants us to look at are smaller than understanding the entire city. In the past week we’ve looked at the process of “slumming.” Inspecting the process of “unslumming” can’t wait much longer. I also took my first stab at explaining the diverse uses that require older buildings and the cheaper rents they might provide.

Jacobs wants us to get in the habit of looking at these processes. Look at local history. Listen to other people. Look around! I don’t need to understand the entire city as a system to explain the process by which garages in my neighborhood are in higher disrepair than the houses, on average.

If I look at a house in Victorian Village, just north of downtown Columbus, and another in my neighborhood, Clintonville, they may be subject to some of the same processes - but many may be specific, localized, differing. Each is embedded in its own set of processes - its own story.

Tomorrow I’ll look at inductive reasoning as a way to ferret out such stories.