(2007-10-19) Blum Vs Jacobs Density

Andrew Blum questions the limits on Urban Development created by the supporters of Jane Jacobs. I saw this firsthand while living in Toronto, just a few blocks from Jacobs's home on Albany Avenue. It is a wonderful urban neighborhood, treed, friendly, and alive. But Toronto was sick at the edges. Thanks to a strong sense of identity-much of it built on Jacobs's own vision and activism-Toronto's relatively low-density downtown neighborhoods have been (until recently) well protected from new tall buildings. As an active participant in Toronto civic politics, Jacobs often showed up at planning meetings to fight the destruction of a beautiful old block in favor of some new condominium tower. The Neighborhood was all. But I couldn't help but see what was happening in the broader city: Growth was being shunted to the Suburb-s, the number of "smog advisories" increased each summer, and the subways were often empty... "I think we're not too far off from recognizing that it's a moral imperative to add density to any place with a transit stop," believes Christopher Leinberger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution-displaying plenty of the modernist brio and contempt for the souls of cities that Jacobs fought. But I'm tending to agree. Maybe instead of converting medium-density to high-density, it makes sense to build more medium-density Urban Village-s instead of low-density: maybe instead of a tower at the SubWay stop, it should be TownHouse-s near the Suburban Commuter Train. I Commented where Steven Johnson linked to this piece.