Jane Jacobs 101

Quality 1. Mixed primary uses

GOOD	BAD
Astoria's Steinway Street bustles with a mix of small shops and apartments. Photo: Wenyi Huang	Dull, homogenous blocks—in this case 3rd Street between Mercer and LaGuardia Place—drew Jacobs's constant ire. Photo: Deniz Ozuyugur

Jacobs judged neighborhoods mostly in functional, as opposed to aesthetic, terms (though for her the two went hand in hand). Did they work? Did they function as effective city units? To answer these questions, she initially assessed nearly every area according to the uses that draw people to it. Primary uses are defined as those that induce people to spend time in the area—essentially businesses, residences, and a few special institutions like museums or libraries. (Secondary uses are those that sprout up to serve people who are already in the neighborhood for other reasons.)

Writing in a time when zoning policy was designed to group like institutions together (residential with residential, commercial with commercial), Jacobs asserted that uses must be intermingled in order to pool groups of people there at different times of day. A business district with significant street traffic only during morning and evening rushes, she pointed out, will support far fewer stores and eateries than a bustling area with pedestrians passing through at all hours. She said work and housing should be mixed, going so far as to praise a glue factory that operated near her place in the West Village. For Jacobs, fostering this diversity of users and commercial enterprises is the Holy Grail for any district, and it all starts with a varied matrix of primary uses.