Awardee's account

Creative cities: with Jane Jacobs on tour in Toronto

Busy and buzzy, Toronto undoubtedly is Canada's most dynamic and diverse city. Everyone visiting the metropolis will be impressed by its vitality and thriving cultural scene. In today's terms, Toronto really is a 'creative city' offering ample room for new business development, innovation and the arts. It cannot be an accident that Jane Jacobs, the world-famous American advocate of the creative city, has chosen to live and work here for years. After having lived in New York, in 1968 disillusion at the Vietnam War caused her to move with her family to the Annex in Toronto, in her words 'a city which works'. Jane Jacobs may be in her late eighties but she is still as passionate as ever in her study of city life. Trained as a journalist she writes in an entertaining way about the 'hustle and bustle' of cities. Common sense, close observation and personal experience are the factors guiding her investigations.

At the same time, Jacobs' work has been influential in the urban planning establishment. Her first book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) is a real classic and reshaped the way urban planners think about their profession. Over the years Jacobs elaborated her vision on cities in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984). Recently, this 'little old lady in tennis shoes' has explored the philosophical side of life, searching in her books Systems of Survival (1992), The Nature of Economies (2000) and Dark Age Ahead (2004) for the moral foundations of society. In these works too, however, she continues to insist on the importance of creative cities for socio-economic development: in the end it is the unplanned chaos of the urban environment that is the driving force behind our welfare and well-being. Could there be a better opportunity to learn about creative cities than going on tour with Jane Jacobs herself in Toronto?

Sidewalk ballet and diversity

Unfortunately, owing to her declined physical mobility touring with Jane Jacobs through the streets in Toronto is not possible anymore. But who wants to meet Ms. Jacobs and get to know her interesting ideas, may drop by in her house in 69 Albany Avenue. After having offered you a cup of tea and her favourite ginger chocolates she will passionately start telling you about cities. For her cities are not abstract entities. In opposition to what urban planners often think, it is simply not possible to straitjacket cities in models. Jacobs rather prefers to use a biological metaphor, as the title of her first book in 1961 already indicated: the city is a living organism that is born, grows, decays and can rise again. Streets play an important part in her evolutionary approach; they are nothing less than the city's vital organs. The city's inhabitants meet in the streets and it is there that trade and business take place. In other words: the 'sidewalk ballet' -contributing to safety, social cohesion and economic dynamism - is played out on the streets. Seen from this perspective any day-to-day activity such as placing a bag of household rubbish outside or chatting with the corner shopkeeper is a deed of dramatic expression. But, says Jacobs, in order for the urban play to be performed correctly the scenery has to meet four conditions. Jointly, these principles of urban design bring about the physical, social and economic diversity being indispensable for a creative city.

Firstly, in the eyes of Jacobs, neighbourhoods must have several functions so that they can be filled with activity at all times of the day. In business districts or commuter suburbs there are people on the street only at the beginning and the end of the working day. Such monofunctional settings almost completely deprive other activities such as cafes and restaurants, culture and the retail trade of any opportunity to flourish. By way of contrast, in neighbourhoods with a functional mix such facilities set off a self-reinforcing process of development. Secondly, Jacobs is a supporter of short blocks of buildings and a finely-meshed pattern of streets. Pedestrians should be given every opportunity to walk around and also to turn into another street from time to time. Thirdly, Jacobs believes that a neighbourhood needs a mix of buildings differing in age and state of upkeep. Buildings both old and new have their own economic value and contribute to a varied cityscape. Finally, Jacobs propagates 'high dwelling densities', i.e. compact neighbourhoods where birds of a different feather gather and flock together. When many different types of people live and work in one spot (families, senior citizens, entrepreneurs, artists, migrants, students), there is sufficient critical mass for a varied range of local facilities. In that type of neighbourhood the local supermarket, the oriental food store and the speciality shop can all co-exist. Just have a look in Toronto's Annex, she says, to see that this diversity pays off indeed!

Social capital and creativity

According to Jacobs, urban diversity ensures that there are people on the street at all times of the day. If there are sufficient 'eyes on the street', she goes on, crime has no chance and the collective feeling of security grows. Variety in function and construction, particularly high density, also plays an important part in the maintenance of social cohesion. Sufficient interaction on the street, at the bus stop or in the shops gives people the feeling that they belong to a community and are at home in their neighbourhood. To denote these loose networks Jacobs uses the term 'social capital'. Although this concept has found acceptance by urban policy-makers, Jacobs regrets that her original notion of social capital as loose and heterogeneous ties largely has been lost. Instead, she says, today's policy makers focus on close and homogeneous rather than diverse networks. Urban diversity is far more important though, states Jacobs, and not only from a social perspective. As she already argued in her books of 1969 and 1984, diversity is the basis of the urban economy as well.

Jane Jacobs stresses that in a district with a variety of suppliers and consumers entrepreneurs can share one another's facilities (e.g. workplaces and machines) and benefit from the varied availability of knowledge, know-how and skills. In addition, this cross-fertilisation works as a magnet for firms looking for a new place to set up a shop. The mix of old and new buildings in the district, moreover, provides opportunities to every entrepreneur in every branch of economic activity. Working under the motto of 'new ideas must use old buildings' a city district can thus expand to become a real breeding place of entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and innovation - in brief, a 'creative city'. Thus, Jane Jacobs does see creativity as emerging from urban diversity that has grown from history. In urban planning - often reasoning in terms of demolition and new construction - this view still is not widely accepted though. But everyone who has met Ms. Jacobs in her beloved Toronto cannot but conclude that she is right: it is the diversity that makes Toronto to a creative city, indeed, 'a city which works'.

Gert-Jan Hospers
Toronto - March 2004

Please click here for a review of Jane Jacobs' book Dark Age Ahead (May 2004).