Year with Jane Jacobs

Entries in Morals (2)

Friday

Jun052009

Defining Family

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Friday, June 5, 2009 at 5:01 PM in

Dark Age Ahead

Forgive the legalese:

“Family” means a number of individuals related to the nominal head of the household or to the spouse of the nominal head of the household living as a single housekeeping unit in a single dwelling unit, but limited to the following:

(a) Husband or wife of the nominal head of the household.

(b) Unmarried children of the nominal head of the household or of the spouse of the nominal head of the household, provided, however, that such unmarried children have no children residing with them.

(c) Father or mother of the nominal head of the household or of the spouse of the nominal head of the household.

(d) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (b) hereof, a family may include not more than one dependent married or unmarried child of the nominal head of the household or of the spouse of the nominal head of the household and the spouse and dependent children of such dependent child. For the purpose of this subsection, a dependent person is one who has more than fifty percent of his total support furnished for him by the nominal head of the household and the spouse of the nominal head of the household.

(e) A family may consist of one individual.

-Definition overturned in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977)

The above definition was too intrusive. For those keeping track, it has something to do with substantive due process (14th Amendment).

This Supreme Court decision still stands, allowing this definition:

One or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, exclusive of household servants. A number of persons but not exceeding two (2) living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, adoption, or marriage shall be deemed to constitute a family.

-Definition upheld in Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974)

The census counts both families and households, though the above definitions are attempting to force a narrow definition to restrict how many individuals can live at a given address in a single-family zoning district. Anything else would be considered non-family, despite possibly remaining a household, forcing such units to either: A) break the law, or B) find a district that allows “group living.” Typical group living uses: fraternities and sororities, halfway homes, assisted living facilities, and prisons.

History would not recognize these definitions. We’ve forgotten the role of the extended family while also losing our community backup.

The East Cleveland definition attempted to define, narrowly, a nuclear family. Culture has enshrined this unit above all others.

Two parents, to say nothing of one, cannot possibly satisfy all the needs of a family-household. “Families rigged to fail” Dark Age Ahead (p34)

Last week, I’d laid into planning’s intrusive moralizing RE: sidewalks. Jacobs has not forgotten this point between 1961 and 2004.

Think of all the responsibilities parents hold:

first aid
tutoring
coach
mentoring
budgeting
purchasing
cooking
home repair and maintenance
banking
acculturation of children
much, much more

Who are the paragons that, unaided and unadvised, can earn a living and also provide all this and more? “Families rigged to fail” Dark Age Ahead (p34)

Certainly the unit defined by East Cleveland would not alone suffice.

Getting it wrong: planning moralisms and city sidewalks

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Friday, May 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM in

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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.

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