I’ve been thinking about Jane Jacobs quite a bit lately. If you don’t know about her, you should (and thank you, Lynn Bell, for introducing me to her). There’s a lot we can learn from her. Jane Jacobs was a devoted activist for the city of New York and smart city planning. As a resident of Greenwich Village, she was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd to oppose the thruway that would have destroyed Lower Manhattan. Her thoughts on urbanization and her belief that cities are living beings with individual ecosystems were profoundly pioneering. Her “Death and Life of Great American Cities” is a must-read.
I’ve also been thinking about my city quite a bit lately. I always tell newcomers to New York that you have to either walk it or bike it to really know it. To really feel it. I can’t imagine the thousands of miles I have traveled on these streets over the last thirty years. This week walking and biking to showings and meetings was no different – except it was all different. The streets and avenues – the arteries of the city were the same, but the heart and soul were missing.
COVID was the match that lit the tinderbox in New York. It didn’t create the issues – it laid them bare. The years of gentrification, homogenization, and inequality finally caught up with us. We tried to turn the city into something it never was and never wanted to be – and she pushed back. Now is our reckoning.
New York was never meant for only those at the top of the ladder. New York was for those who wanted to create their own ladders – or smash the ladder altogether. It was not meant for soulless glass towers and concrete boxes. It was built for inspired architecture and with a craftsman’s touch. It was not intended to be littered with big box retailers found every place in the world. It was meant to be authentic and unique to the people of New York and their stories with places, shops, and restaurants found only here. We stopped being the city that everyone was trying to emulate, and we turned into everyone else. We lost our way. We let her down and she is hurting.
I am not one of the naysayers furiously writing the obituary of New York City. Just the opposite, I am committed to finding a better way forward. However, before we start to march forward, we need to look back at what made New York special in the first place – its people, its diversity, its neighborhoods, architecture, art, fashion, music, and the list goes on. This is what makes New York, well New York. Jane Jacobs knew this. She preached this half a century ago. She knew that if we lost our neighborhoods and people to gentrification, homogenization, and inequality – we would lose our city. She was right. And here we are.
Rosh Hashanah starts tonight. I love this time of year because it gives me time to stop and reflect on the past year and what I can do better in the year ahead. We need to do the same for our city. This is not the end of New York; it is the beginning of something better. Jane Jacobs gave us a roadmap. We just need to follow it. Let’s do this.
L’Shana Tova, Shaun.