Jane Jacobs's urban ethics

Epistemological critiques to the technocratic planning model: the role of Jane Jacobs, Paul Davidoff, Reyner Banham and Giancarlo De Carlo in the 1960s

“…Moreover, complexity studies (Stengers 2000) significantly put the accent on the importance of learning processes (single and double-loop, individual and collective), thus introducing a dynamic dimension in the production and use of knowledge, which both Jane Jacobs (Laurence 2016) and Giancarlo De Carlo advocated for planning processes. The mobilisation of different knowledge forms in complex interactive processes, at the basis of many developments in planning thought in the 1980s and 1990s, finds here one of its roots (Innes and Booher 2010).…”

“…Jane Jacobs' position on the use of rationality (Jacobs 1961;Callahan and Ikeda 2014;Laurence 2016) and on the over-reliance on scientific and technical reasoning in urban planning and urban regeneration policies has been of great importance for its consequences on the planning and urban studies debate, but it is by no means isolated in the 1960s. Interestingly enough, different scholars and activists from quite different disciplinary and political backgrounds expressed quite similar critiques to the knowledge-action connection in the traditional technocratic planning model, contributing with their arguments to pave the way for a sort of epistemological 'revolution' in planning theory and practice in the subsequent decades, anticipating to some extent the scientific and philosophical critiques to positivist epistemology that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s (De Roo 2010; Palermo and Ponzini 2014).…”

“…Jacobs very clearly highlights the point introducing the 'organised complexity' concept, which calls for a completely different form of knowledge production and mobilisation compared to the ones which target simple problems, or problems of disorganised complexity (Jacobs 1961;Laurence 2016). Impinging on Weaver's examination of the evolution of natural sciences in the preceding half century (Weaver 1958), she proposes to decisively go beyond both the traditional epistemology of simple problems connected to Newtonian physics, and the statistical approach to disorganised complexity, to move to a perspective closer to the life sciences ('organised complexity').…”

“…Thus the epistemological critique becomes also a political critique, even if this dimension is differently present in the critical discourses. The positions are nuanced in the four authors, and the political side to the critique might emerge more or less explicitly, while for instance it is frequently implicit in Jacobs, who manifests an interest in urban economic and social vitality from a substantive point of view (Laurence 2016(Laurence , 2018, more than a specific interest in decision-making and in the process dimension.…”

Using Flickr Data to Understand Image of Urban Public Spaces with a Deep Learning Model: A Case Study of the Haihe River in Tianjin

“…Sociological topics such as the privatization of public space [3], gentrification, social control [4], public participation, and social justice in public spaces are the most popular research topics. Jane Jacobs thinks that only democratically shared public spaces can truly generate public life [5]. No matter the direction of the related research on public space, people-oriented spaces and public participation have always been the most important topics [6][7][8].…”