Background

I have been on and off about my “OrthoTown” project but finally found some motivation to update some of these essays I wrote back on my secondary blog on Urbit. I have taken down my Urbit blog and am transferring things over to here.

Essay

Diversity is a controversial word in this current cultural mileu especially in light of the war on wokeness being conducted by DeSantis and his followers. But like many words, it is a word whose meaning changes based on the context. The word ‘Oriental’ being shouted out of a belligerent elderly man at a person of East Asian descent is of a qualitatively different nature than when it is used by a 19th century academic studying the mythology Far East, and is different than the local Chinese restaurant which is called the “Oriental Express”. Thus it is with the word diversity. The diversity of the DEI cult, and the diversity as championed by Jane Jacobs are entirely different natures. For Jacobs, it is the core of what makes a community stable and cohesive, and furthermore what makes a community flourish. But what is meant by diversity?

Perhaps it is best to raise a mental image of its opposite… The corporate park with its grey gloomy asphalt parking lot surrounding a blocky blob of a commercial building. This blob is also adjacent to other similar looking blobs filled with white-collar working professionals; engineers, lawyers, medical professionals, etc. It is perhaps a few blocks away from a Starbucks, but any signs of real life are missing. Only cars, and buildings. To see a person walking to and between places that isn’t just their car and their office would be an oddity.

Contrast this with the vibrant life of the traditional European city, like Venice, Paris, or Rome. These cities were built for facilitating the movement of people, and commerce and looking at their streets this of course reflects that original intention; narrower car lanes, brick roads, large plazas and wider sidewalks. Of course these cities can hardly be compared to corporate parks exiled to the margins of cities. What about within actual cities?

The best cities in America to live in are compact, dense, and convenient to travel without cars. These cities (historically) included San Francisco, New York City, Chicago etc. What makes life in the city attractive? Why work and live in the hussle and bussle of the city rather than working in the corporate park and driving on the interstate to your suburb? For Jane Jacobs the answer would be diversity. The city offers abundant services and human resources within an arms length, whether that is a thriving restaurant and bar scene, or theatre and ballet venues, intellectual scene, etc. A town of 10,000 would barely be able to support one ballet troupe or orchestra, let alone a few. This diversity of services are made only possible through density of both peoples and the buildings that house them. However, the buildings and too must be “diverse” in the sense that having entire swathes of land dedicated solely to residential use destroys this diversity, or on a smaller scale, public building projects also oppose this ideal of diversity.

In the first chunk of Jane Jacob’s magnum opus the The Death and Life of Great American Cities she argues the fruit of diversity is always having a vibrant street life, one in which although people may not know one another intimately, people living on the same street are bound by some invisible social glue through seeing each other regularly, and visiting the same small businesses. For example, the local butcher which serves a quarter or a third of the local residents will not just serve as a butcher but also as a courier of keys, messages, and letters because he is a pillar of the community. There people will also see one another regularly and make connections and acquaintances, friends even. The butcher will also keep an eye out on the children playing on the street, but so will the mothers or grandmothers looking out the window, or the other small business owners like the cobbler, or the locksmith. There is a high degree of self-sufficiency and self-policing that exists in a “diverse” community. This self-policing arises out of the availability of eyes on the street through conveniently placed small businesses, adults running errands at different times of the day, parents or grandparents at home. Such a large supply of surveillance serves as a boon to the community, especially to the children who never get too out of hand.

North End in the mid 20th century was one such example often referred to by Jacobs. Despite it being categorized as a “slum”, it often outperformed not only wealthier neighborhoods but also new housing projects spearheaded by municipalities and their urban planners in metrics like delinquency rates, crime, and disease. Contrast this with the public building project, which may indeed look nicer on the outside, with its newer facilities, open space, grass and playgrounds. But such a building does not encourage “eyes on the street” as often tenants are discouraged from using the street, and delinquency and crime can be hidden through all the intricate hallways, elevators, staircases that interlace the building. Such availability of unsurveilled and unsupervised space is not a problem in a so-called diverse space. With the advent of technology like surveillance cameras and the proliferation of street light design perhaps you may think these things are no longer necessary. But I believe that the presence of a real human being (or many) makes all the difference in deterrence of crime and unwanted social behaviors. There are of course exceptions. I am not ignorant of the insanity of certain individuals in the presence of several people or even crowds of people (thinking of you NYC trains). Nevertheless, I believe in the average middle class community, such an arrangement would be ideal for human flourishing, as opposed to the ideas propagated by the “decentralists” and idealists like Ebenezer Howard, or the powerful city planners like Robert Moses. Another interesting case study is the necessity of diversity in good use of parks. Jacobs attacks the presupposition that open space can justify itself, or in other words that it is a net good that speaks for itself. Instead she supposes that just as diversity can make sidewalk life vibrant, safe, and attractive… so can it make a park exhibit the same qualities. An empty park may seem attractive to some introverts sure, but many, including myself, would rather go to a park teeming with life. New York City for example has its much beloved Washington Square Park, or in Chinatown the Sara D. Roosevelt Park (or Grand St. Park). These parks are used for most of the day and even into the evening, and serve as a great meeting point for many locals. This is because of the great density and diversity of people that come and go, which cannot necessarily be replicated in other areas where single-use zoning dominates.

Jacobs quotes Joseph guess who offers a description of the type of people that frequent the park and the times they come and go in Rittenhouse Park

“First, a few early-bird walkers who live beside the park take brisk Strolls. They are shonly joined, and followed, by residents who cross the park on their way to work out of the district. Next come people from outside the district, crossing the park on their way to work within the neighborhood. Soon after these people have left the square the errand-goers start to come through, many of them lingering, and in mid-morning mothers and small children come in, along with an increasing number of shoppers. Before noon the mothen and children leave, but the square’s population continues to grow because of employees on their lunch hour and also because of people coming from elsewhere to lunch at the art club and the other restaurants around. In the afternoon mothers and children tum up again, the shoppers and errand-goers linger longer, and school children evenrually add themselves in. In the later afternoon the mothers have left but the homeward-bound workers come through-first those leaving the neighborhood. and then those retuming to it. Some of these linger. From then on into the evening the square gets many young people on dates, some who are dining our nearby, some who live nearby, some who seem to come just because of the nice combination of liveliness and leisure. All through the day, there is a sprinkling of old people with time on their hands, some people who are indigent, and various unidentified idlers.” - Page 96-97 of Death and Life of Great American cities

Rittenhouse Park in Philidelphia would not be as well used if it were not for the diversity of age, occupation, and land use of the spaces that surrounded it. On the other hand, some parks simply exist, unloved by those who live near it, or even avoided because it is a place of crime, deliquency and homelessness. Jacobs would pin these negative outcomes of the park on lack of diversity and density. A large park with an insufficiently large base of people to draw from would create an environment where it would be unlikely to run into others in the park. Additionally, even a large population from which to draw from, if too homogenous would lead to underuse of the park. For example, Jacobs offers Washington Park not too far from Rittenhouse Park in Philly as an example.

As a result of only having commercial buildings around it, and very low number of residential units, the park is unpopulated from morning until noon (due to lunch time) and again after lunch, meaning the only time it is used is at lunch by the local office workers. Therefore, Washington Square, of necessity. is a vacuum most of the day and evening. Into it came what usually fils city vacuums-a form of blight” - Page 97 of Death and Life of Great American Cities

In a similar fashion she makes the argument for diversity in the maintenance and flourishing of city streets so does she cite diversity as crucial in the sucess of parks. I believe that the same would apply even to the smaller scales like within the home. The success of a room or a furniture lies in the diversity of use that it receives. Hence, the unloved and unused antique rocking chair becomes simply a decoration rather than a functional piece of furniture.

To conclude, diversity is key in making a space lively, and full of life. One could apply this to single buildings like churches, homes, or schools, or communities composed of many buildings, or even back to the smaller scale of single rooms… Regardless of the scale, diversity seems to have utility in determining what makes physical spaces comfortable, and inviting to us.