The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard : Contradiction and Meaning in City Form

Originating in archaic parables of the Garden and the Citadel, gender allegories have been projected upon built environments throughout history. Ebenezer Howard, an Englishman, and Jane Jacobs, a naturalized Canadian, personify the twentieth century's opposing outlooks on cities. Howard had envisaged small towns, newly built from scratch, fashioned on single family homes with small gardens. Jacobs embraced existing inner-city neighbourhoods emphasizing the verve of the living street. From Howard's idea, the American Dream of garden suburbs had emerged, yet his conceptualization of a modern city received criticism for being uniform and alienated from the rest of the city. Similarly, at the turn of the new century, Jacobs' inner-city neighbourhoods came to be recognized as the result of commodification, vacillating between poverty and newly discovered hubs of urban authenticity. Presenting Howard and Jacobs within a psychocultural context, The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard addresses our urban crisis in the recognition that "city form" is a gendered, allegorical medium expressing femininity and masculinity within two founding features of the built environment: void and volume. Both founding contrasts bring tensions, but also the opportunities of fusion between pairs of urban polarities: human scale against superscale, gait against speed, and spontaneity against surveillance. Jacobs and Howard, in their respective attitudes, have come to embrace the two ancient archetypes, the Garden and the Citadel, leaving it to future generations to blend their two contrarian stances

Ebenezer Howard, an Englishman, and Jane Jacobs, a naturalized Canadian, personify the twentieth century’s opposing outlooks on cities. Howard envisaged small towns, newly built from scratch and comprised of single-family homes with small gardens, while Jacobs embraced existing inner-city neighbourhoods that emphasized the verve of the living street. Both figures have had their share of supporters as well as detractors: Howard's conceptualization received criticism for its uniformity and alienation from the city core, while Jacobs’s urban vision came to be recognized as the result of invasive gentrification.

Presenting Howard and Jacobs within a psychocultural context, The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard addresses our urban crisis in its recognition that "city form is a gendered, allegorical medium expressing femininity and masculinity within two founding features of the built environment: void and volume." These founding contrasts represent both tension as well as the opportunity for fusion between pairs of urban polarities: human scale against superscale, gait against speed, and spontaneity against surveillance. In their respective attitudes, Howard and Jacobs have come to embrace the two ancient archetypes of the Garden and the Citadel, leaving it to future generations to blend their two contrarian stances.

Ebenezer Howard, an Englishman, and Jane Jacobs, a naturalized Canadian, personify the twentieth century's opposing outlooks on cities. Howard envisaged small towns, newly built from scratch and comprised of single-family homes with small gardens, while Jacobs embraced existing inner-city neighbourhoods that emphasized the verve of the living street. Both figures have had their share of supporters as well as detractors: Howard's conceptualization received criticism for its uniformity and alienation from the city core, while Jacobs's urban vision came to be recognized as the result of invasive gentrification.0Presenting Howard and Jacobs within a psychocultural context, 'The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard' addresses our urban crisis in its recognition that "city form is a gendered, allegorical medium expressing femininity and masculinity within two founding features of the built environment: void and volume." These founding contrasts represent both tension as well as the opportunity for fusion between pairs of urban polarities: human scale against superscale, gait against speed, and spontaneity against surveillance. In their respective attitudes, Howard and Jacobs have come to embrace the two ancient archetypes of the Garden and the Citadel, leaving it to future generations to blend their two contrarian stances Ebenezer Howard, an Englishman, and Jane Jacobs, a naturalized Canadian, personify the twentieth century's opposing outlooks on cities. Howard envisaged small towns, newly built from scratch and comprised of single-family homes with small gardens, while Jacobs embraced existing inner-city neighbourhoods that emphasized the verve of the living street. Both figures have had their share of supporters as well as detractors: Howard's conceptualization received criticism for its uniformity and alienation from the city core, while Jacobs's urban vision came to be recognized as the result of invasive gentrification. Presenting Howard and Jacobs within a psychocultural context, The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard addresses our urban crisis in its recognition that'city form is a gendered, allegorical medium expressing femininity and masculinity within two founding features of the built environment: void and volume.'These founding contrasts represent both tension as well as the opportunity for fusion between pairs of urban polarities: human scale against superscale, gait against speed, and spontaneity against surveillance. In their respective attitudes, Howard and Jacobs have come to embrace the two ancient archetypes of the Garden and the Citadel, leaving it to future generations to blend their two contrarian stances. "This monograph brings the urban planning approaches of Howard and Jacobs into a single urbanist context. It identifies pints of contrast as well as commonalities between the two approaches by setting them first onto a paradigmatic level of prime environmental archetypes that have shaped city form since archaic times. Through the examination of various urbanist and urban planning approaches throughout the 20th century both Howard and Jacobs are shown as steadfast albeit imperfect chaperones of the enviromental archetypes of the Farden and the Citadel for the idea city."-- Provided by publisher