In planning residential life, they aim at filling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for matriarchal societies. The ideal of a matriarchy inevitably accompanies all planning in which residences are isolated from other parts of life. “The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p83)

Jacobs skips ahead to one of the city diversity conditions: primary mixed uses. Separation of uses promotes the sexist “separate spheres” for public and private life. Typified by nineteenth century Victorians, men operated in the public sphere of work and daily life outside the home; women operated in the private sphere of the home (at least according to the ideal).

This is probably not the last time I link to The Great Good Place.The “separate spheres” setup forgets the interstitial space. If home is the primary place, work is the secondary place, then other places to meet or connect are “third places” in the parlance of Ray Oldenburg.

On good city streets, populated with all others, male and female, “carrying on other their other pursuits.” (“The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children” The Death and Life of Great American Cities, p82), sidewalks—part of the public right-of-way or public realm—are another “third place,” valuable not only for contact and self-policing, but also supervision and rearing/”assimilation” of children.

Sidebar: Thanks to @gosner for a timely link: The Built Environment: Designing Communities to Promote Physical Activity in Children. The American Academy of Pediatrics ties a direct link between the built environment and children’s health. Unfortunately, they focus on the presence of parks. They do mention walking to school and social norms surrounding how parents allow children to play, but they shy away from Jacobs’ love of sidewalks. They do appear quite worried about asthma.

Orthodox planning is much imbued with puritanical and Utopian conceptions of how people should spend their free time, and in planning, these moralisms on people’s private lives are deeply confused with concepts about the workings of cities. “The uses of sidewalks: safety” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p41)

For years, urban areas formed as a result of the needs, means and behaviors of their inhabitants - urban form as evidence (see Habit - Unaverage Clues). Suddenly shocked by living conditions in overcrowded urban areas around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century city planning took root in the real and pressing need to improve health standards. We got carried away, tricking ourselves into thinking that we knew better - than the city and those forming it:

For the purpose of promoting health, safety, morals, or the general welfare of the community, the legislative body of cities and incorporated villages is hereby empowered to regulate and restrict the height, number of stories and size of buildings and other structures, the percentage of lot that may be occupied, the size of yards, courts, and other open spaces, the density of population and the location and use of buildings, structures and land of trade, industry, residence or other purposes. Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (pdf) emphasis added.

Yes, your city can promote specific morals - even to the detriment of the workings of cities.

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.

[Unaverage clues] are often the only announcers of the way various large quantities are behaving, or failing to behave, in combination with each other. “The kind of problem a city is,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p443)

A few years ago, I was helping collect data for a citywide traffic count. Unlike many traffic counts, automating the count as cars travel over pneumatic tubes, this was a pedestrian and bike traffic count, requiring the coordination of manual counters at various points across the city. I was one of those counters at what turned out to be one of the most trafficked points.

The resources required for such a comprehensive statistical study aren’t insignificant. So what do you do if you don’t have these resources and no one’s collected data for your area?

This awareness of “unaverage” clues—or awareness of their lack—is, again, something any citizen can practice. “The kind of problem a city is,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p443)

I had four clickers: two for pedestrians and two for bicyclists. I reset one pair every 15 minutes while continuing to take the count on the other. I did that for two hours. Over that time, two unaverage clues sat down on either side of the bench I’d found with a great view of the count. They were panhandlers.

Statistically, these two men were inconsequential - two clicks out of hundreds. However, their presence is a clue to the behavior of many more people. They indicate that a large number of people walk by this location. A fraction give them money. They have every economic incentive to find a valuable location. As long as they’re quiet, not hassling anyone, and in the public right-of-way, no one can tell them to move.

These unaverage clues, in professional-speak, are proxies - variables with close correlation to another variable.