If you’ve looked on newsstands at all this week, you know that we’ve posed the question, “Has Manhattan lost its soul?” (and attempted to answer it). What you may not know is that our criteria for assessing the “soul” of each neighborhood derived largely from the ideas of Jane Jacobs, the famous urbanist–Robert Moses opponent–West Village savior. We did some research on her and everything. To wit, many of us read (portions of) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her seminal 1961 tome on what makes cities work. The book puts forward some interesting assertions about what’s good for cities (e.g., parks tend to be useless), and sparked a lot of discussion among the edit staff. So we thought it would be fun to draw out that exchange and share it with you, our beloved readers. (There will be multiple updates later today and tomorrow.)

Since the goal is to make this interesting, I’m starting it controversially: I think J.J. would approve of Atlantic Yards. Actually, she was a cranky broad who no doubt would have found many faults with it. Let me rephrase. I think Atlantic Yards largely follows Jacobs’s principles and would enliven that neighborhood in a way she would admire.

Let’s look at it through the J.J. lens. That neighborhood right now is an ugly traffic confluence and not much else. It’s full of chain stores and terrible for pedestrian traffic. Atlantic Yards would add an amenity where there is none. Though I’m not intimately familiar with the plans, I know it includes extensive mixed-use and varied street-level commercial space, along with many residential units (and a hotel, I believe). It would increase the density of that area, as Jacobs prefers.

I know that Jacobs was not a fan of megaproject-style development because she favored a variety of new and old buildings, but what else can a stadium be but a megaproject? It strikes me as the type of primary-use anchor (like the nautical museum she proposed for lower Manhattan) that she recommends for dull neighborhoods that need a boost. Furthermore, in the time since Death and Life was written, adding stadia to urban settings has been a proven method for bringing a shabby area back to life. (Baltimore was the first major example of this.) There are also ways to mitigate the project’s less Jacobsian qualities—for example, increasing the affordable-housing ratio and adding pedestrian streets to break up the scale somewhat.

I don’t think it’s the “unique quality” of Brooklyn that opponents want to protect; it’s their low rents (which is totally legit—they should just admit to that). And they cast themselves as Jacobs-like crusaders because they don’t know any better. Jane would be ashamed.

Since this is the first post, I’ll even include a bonus tidbit: I think Jacobs would have hated the Highline.

Here’s my shorter argument for this one. The lady was no fan of parks. (I’ve never heard anyone speak so sneeringly of grass.) She says (on page 108 in Death and Life) that “magnificent views and handsome landscaping fail to operate as demand goods,” meaning that parks in themselves should not be thought of as attractions that will draw people to an area. She said they should support areas that are already popular. Much of the swath that the Highline will cover is not popular or attractive now. Adding a park there would not change anything, according to Jane. It’s also a long, narrow park, which she describes as the worst kind (she said they should be focal points). But the worst insult of the highline is that it’s off the street! Jacobs was the queen of street life. How could she favor anything that would lure people off of it? I am certain she would scorn this project with all her being.