Urban 2
Permeability (of streets and neighborhoods)
Definition: The degree to which an area allows for movement through a connected network of streets and paths.
Reading/Context: A key lesson from Leiden. Jane Jacobs advocated for short blocks to create a permeable grid, offering multiple routes and enriching the urban experience.
Legibility (of urban landscape)
Definition: The ease with which a city's layout can be understood and navigated.
Reading/Context: A legible city has clear landmarks and districts. Jacobs argued that a clear, understandable street pattern is vital for people to feel comfortable and engaged with their city.
Third Places
Definition: Social environments separate from home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place").
Reading/Context: Essential for building social capital and combating isolation. Jacobs highlighted the role of vibrant, sidewalk life and local businesses like bars and cafes as essential "third places."
Mixed-Uses
Definition: The integration of different land uses within the same neighborhood or building.
Reading/Context: A core Jacobs principle. She argued that a mixture of uses (residential, commercial, cultural) throughout the day and night creates a constant "ballet of the sidewalk," ensuring eyes on the street and safety.
Adaptive Reuse
Definition: Repurposing old buildings for new functions instead of demolishing them.
Reading/Context: Jacobs valued old buildings because they provide affordable space for new, small businesses and diverse uses, which are essential for a district's economic and social vitality.
Organic Urban Development
Definition: Unplanned, incremental city growth over time.
Reading/Context: Jacobs favored this bottom-up, community-driven process over large-scale, master-planned developments, which she saw as destroying the complex social and economic fabric of cities.
Sense of Place
Definition: The unique character and emotional attachment associated with a location.
Reading/Context: Created through a combination of physical setting, history, and daily social rituals. Jacobs' "street ballet" is a key contributor to a neighborhood's unique sense of place.
Urban Sprawl
Definition: The uncontrolled, low-density, car-dependent expansion of cities.
Reading/Context: Represents the antithesis of Jacobs' principles, characterized by segregated uses, lack of pedestrian life, and social isolation.
Impervious Surfaces
Definition: Human-made surfaces that prevent water from soaking into the ground.
Reading/Context: A major environmental problem exacerbated by sprawl. Contributes to stormwater runoff and the urban heat island effect.
Folded Map Project
Definition: A project connecting residents of similar addresses on different sides of a city.
Reading/Context: Visually highlights the stark urban disparities and segregation that can result from planning policies like redlining.
Shrinking Cities
Definition: Urban areas experiencing significant population loss and economic decline.
Reading/Context: Presents challenges like vacant properties. Strategies like adaptive reuse become key for revitalization.
Housing Wage (Out of reach Study)
Definition: The hourly wage needed to afford a modest rental without spending over of income.
Reading/Context: Highlights the affordable housing crisis, which can displace the very people who create a neighborhood's vitality.
Food Insecurity
Definition: The state of lacking reliable access to sufficient affordable, nutritious food.
Reading/Context: An urban problem often found in "food deserts," which are frequently located in neighborhoods historically impacted by disinvestment.
Gendered Cities
Definition: The concept that city planning often ignores women's needs and safety.
Reading/Context: Jacobs' concept of "eyes on the street" is a foundational idea for creating safer public spaces for women and all people.
Social Isolation / Loneliness
Definition: A lack of social connections and feeling disconnected from community.
Reading/Context: Jacobs argued that vibrant, mixed-use sidewalks with "eyes on the street" are a primary defense against the social isolation that can occur in cities.
Climate Change
Definition: Long-term shifts in global weather patterns, largely driven by human activity.
Reading/Context: A critical challenge for cities. Dense, walkable neighborhoods (as advocated by Jacobs) are a key mitigation strategy by reducing car dependency.
Killer Heat
Definition: Extreme and potentially deadly heat waves, worsened by the urban heat island effect.
Reading/Context: The prevalence of impervious surfaces and lack of greenery in dense areas without adequate design can exacerbate this issue.
Half Earth
Definition: A conservation proposal to protect half of the Earth's land and sea for biodiversity.
Reading/Context: Relates to urban planning through the preservation of regional greenbelts to contain sprawl and protect ecosystems.
Spanish Laws of the Indies
Definition: 16th-century Spanish regulations dictating the layout of new colonial towns.
Reading/Context: Created a formal, grid-based model for settlement, representing a top-down, master-planned approach to city building.
1899 Building Height Act (Washington, DC)
Definition: A federal law that restricted building heights in Washington, D.C.
Reading/Context: An early form of height regulation to preserve the visual prominence of the Capitol and other monuments.
Dumbbell Tenements
Definition: A type of urban apartment building with a narrow, "dumbbell" shape.
Reading/Context: Notorious for poor living conditions, leading to overcrowding, disease, and a lack of light/air—conditions Jacobs would later argue against.
Central Park and Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.
Definition: A famous designed urban park by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.
Reading/Context: Championed the value of public greenspace as essential social infrastructure for mental and physical health in dense cities.
Hull House and Jane Addams
Definition: A settlement house in Chicago providing services to immigrant communities.
Reading/Context: Pioneered social reform and community-based work. Jane Addams' grassroots mapping of urban issues prefigured Jacobs' own community-focused activism.
City Beautiful Movement
Definition: An early 20th-century movement advocating for beautification and grand civic design.
Reading/Context: Aimed to create moral and civic virtue through monumental architecture and planning, a top-down approach that contrasted with Jane Jacobs' bottom-up perspective.
Ebenezer Howard and Garden Cities
Definition: A planner who proposed the "Garden City" model of self-contained communities.
Reading/Context: Envisioned towns surrounded by greenbelts. While well-intentioned, its emphasis on separating uses contrasts with Jacobs' advocacy for mixed-use density.
Clarence Perry and the Neighborhood Concept
Definition: A planner who defined the "Neighborhood Unit" model.
Reading/Context: Organized residential areas around a school, with through-traffic routed around. This concept of limiting through-traffic can conflict with Jacobs' idea of a permeable street grid.
The Equitable Building (1913)
Definition: A NYC skyscraper whose scale and shadow prompted zoning reform.
Reading/Context: Its impact catalyzed the creation of NYC's 1916 Zoning Resolution, an early attempt to control the negative externalities of dense development.
1916 Zoning Resolution (NYC)
Definition: The first comprehensive zoning code in the United States.
Reading/Context: Regulated building use, height, and lot coverage. This was a regulatory response to the problems of unmanaged density, creating the "setback" skyscraper.
Air Rights
Definition: The legal ability to use or control the airspace above a property.
Reading/Context: Can be sold or transferred via Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), a tool to preserve historic buildings while allowing density elsewhere.
Greenbelt, Maryland
Definition: One of the first "Greenbelt Towns" built during the New Deal.
Reading/Context: A planned community directly inspired by Ebenezer Howard's Garden City principles, featuring a surrounding belt of natural land.
Levittown
Definition: A post-WWII mass-produced suburban development.
Reading/Context: Symbolized the post-war shift to suburban sprawl and was enforced with restrictive covenants that legally encoded racial segregation.
Restrictive Covenants (Racial Covenants)
Definition: Clauses in property deeds prohibiting sale or occupancy based on race.
Reading/Context: A legal tool used to enforce racial segregation in suburbs like Levittown, creating lasting patterns of inequality.
Redlining and the HOLC (Home Owners' Loan Corporation)
Definition: The discriminatory practice of denying services based on neighborhood racial composition.
Reading/Context: HOLC created color-coded maps used to systematically deny loans in minority areas, a government-sanctioned policy that devastated communities.
Interstate Highway Act of 1956
Definition: A federal law funding the construction of the Interstate Highway System.
Reading/Context: Highways were often routed through vibrant, low-income, and minority urban neighborhoods, physically destroying them and creating "border vacuums."
Urban Renewal
Definition: A mid-20th-century policy of clearing "blighted" urban neighborhoods.
Reading/Context: Often called "negro removal," this top-down process, opposed by Jane Jacobs, displaced countless communities for freeways and civic projects.
Jane Jacobs
Definition: An activist and author who championed community-based planning.
Reading/Context: Advocated for mixed-uses, density, short blocks, and "eyes on the street." Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a foundational text criticizing top-down urban renewal.
Robert Moses
Definition: A powerful New York City official who shaped the region through public works.
Reading/Context: The archetype of the top-down, master planner. His large-scale urban renewal and highway projects were the primary target of Jane Jacobs' activism.
Pruitt Igoe
Definition: A large public housing complex that became a symbol of failed urban renewal policies.
Reading/Context: Its demolition in the 1970s is often cited as the failure of the modernist, high-rise model of public housing and top-down planning.
Density (V. Overcrowding)
Definition: Density is a measure of people/units per area. Overcrowding is a negative condition from too many people in a dwelling.
Reading/Context: Jacobs was a strong proponent of density for fostering vitality and innovation, but distinguished it from the unhealthy conditions of overcrowding.
Barcelona's Superblocks
Definition: An urban model where through-traffic is restricted to the perimeter of multi-block areas.
Reading/Context: Reclaims street space for pedestrians and cyclists, creating a safer, more vibrant public realm aligned with Jacobs' principles.
The High Line
Definition: An elevated former freight rail line in NYC transformed into a linear park.
Reading/Context: A premier example of adaptive reuse that has spurred massive investment, demonstrating both the value and challenges of green infrastructure.
Transfer of Development Rights (TDR)
Definition: A zoning tool allowing landowners to sell development rights from one property to another.
Reading/Context: Used to preserve historic sites or open space (the "sending" site) while directing density to appropriate "receiving" areas.
Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs)
Definition: A regulatory line to contain urban expansion and protect rural land.
Reading/Context: A primary tool to combat urban sprawl, as used in Portland, OR, by encouraging infill development and density inside the boundary.
Upzoning
Definition: Changing zoning laws to allow for greater density or more uses.
Reading/Context: A key strategy to increase housing supply and enable missing middle housing, moving away from single-use zoning.
Infill Development
Definition: Building on vacant or underused parcels within existing urban areas.
Reading/Context: Increases density without contributing to sprawl, often occurring on brownfields or greyfields.
Brownfields, Greyfields, and Greenfields
Definition: Brownfields: Contaminated industrial sites. Greyfields: Underused shopping centers. Greenfields: Undeveloped land.
Reading/Context: Planning prioritizes redeveloping brownfields and greyfields over greenfields to curb sprawl and reuse existing infrastructure.
Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
Definition: Small, independent residential units on the same lot as a single-family home.
Reading/Context: Provides "gentle density," increases rental housing supply, and supports ageing in place.
15-Minute City
Definition: An urban concept where daily needs are within a -minute walk or bike ride.
Reading/Context: A modern iteration of Jacobs' principles, requiring mixed-uses, density, and complete streets to function.
Form-Based Codes
Definition: A method of regulating development to achieve a specific physical form.
Reading/Context: Focuses on the relationship between buildings and the street to create a walkable public realm, rather than separating uses.
Inclusionary Housing Requirements ("Inclusionary Zoning")
Definition: Policies requiring a percentage of affordable units in new market-rate developments.
Reading/Context: A key tool for creating mixed-income neighborhoods and preventing economic segregation.
Missing Middle Housing
Definition: A range of multi-unit housing types compatible in scale with single-family homes.
Reading/Context: Includes duplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes. These provide gentle density but are often illegal due to zoning.
Community Land Trust
Definition: A non-profit that holds land in trust to provide permanent affordable housing.
Reading/Context: Removes the cost of land from the housing price to ensure long-term affordability for the community.
New Urbanism
Definition: A planning movement promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods.
Reading/Context: A direct response to sprawl that draws heavily on Jane Jacobs' principles of traditional neighborhood design.
High Cost of Free Parking (Donald Shoup)
Definition: The concept that "free" parking has significant hidden economic, social, and environmental costs.
Reading/Context: Advocates for market-rate parking to reduce driving, support urban vitality, and make housing more affordable.
Complete Streets
Definition: A policy and design approach where streets are safe for all users.
Reading/Context: Designed for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and motorists. Essential for achieving a -minute city.
Road Diet
Definition: Reconfiguring a roadway to reduce travel lanes and reallocate space.
Reading/Context: A traffic calming measure to improve safety for non-motorists, often adding bike lanes or wider sidewalks.
Woonerf
Definition: A Dutch "living street" where cars, cyclists, and pedestrians share the same surface.
Reading/Context: A radical form of traffic calming that prioritizes people over vehicles, creating a safer social space.
Tactical Urbanism
Definition: A low-cost, temporary approach to testing changes to the built environment.
Reading/Context: Often grassroots-led, using short-term projects like parklets to demonstrate long-term potential for people-centric streets.
Parklets
Definition: A small public space created by converting curbside parking spots.
Reading/Context: A common tactical urbanism intervention that reclaims space from cars for people, illustrating the "high cost of free parking."
Last Mile Problem
Definition: The challenge of connecting people from a transit stop to their final destination.
Reading/Context: A major barrier to public transit use. Micromobility (e-scooters, bikes) is a key solution.
Social Infrastructure
Definition: The physical places and organizations that shape social interaction.
Reading/Context: Includes libraries, parks, and community centers. Essential for building community and combating loneliness, a key Jacobs concept.
William "Holly" Whyte
Definition: An urbanist who studied how people use public spaces.
Reading/Context: His research, documented in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, provided empirical support for many of Jane Jacobs' observations about vibrant city life.
Biophilia
Definition: The hypothesis that humans have an innate connection to nature.
Reading/Context: In planning, leads to biophilic cities that integrate nature into the urban fabric to improve well-being.
3-30-300 Rule
Definition: An urban forestry rule: see trees from home, neighborhood canopy, a park within .
Reading/Context: A guideline for ensuring adequate access to nature in cities, supporting both mental health and climate adaptation.
Stream Daylighting
Definition: The practice of uncovering a buried stream and restoring it to a surface channel.
Reading/Context: Restores ecology, manages stormwater, and creates valuable green corridors for people and wildlife.
Bioretention and Rain Gardens
Definition: Landscaped depressions designed to capture and filter stormwater runoff.
Reading/Context: A form of green infrastructure that improves water quality, reduces flooding, and adds biophilic elements.
Kampung Admiralty (Singapore)
Definition: A high-rise integrated public development.
Reading/Context: Combines a community plaza, medical center, and apartments for seniors, creating a vertical "third place" and promoting social infrastructure.
Walking School Bus / Bike Bus
Definition: A group of children walking or biking to school along a set route with adult supervision.
Reading/Context: A community-led initiative that promotes safety, health, and reduces car dependency on school streets.
Home GR/OWN (Milwaukee)
Definition: A program that transforms city-owned vacant lots into community gardens and farms.
Reading/Context: Addresses shrinking cities and food insecurity by activating vacant land for community benefit and local food production.
Rotterdam's Water Plazas
Definition: Public plazas designed to temporarily hold stormwater during heavy rains.
Reading/Context: A form of climate adaptation that combines water management with social space, making the city more resilient.
Acoma Pueblo ("Sky City")
Definition: An ancient Pueblo settlement in New Mexico, continuously inhabited for over a millennium.
Reading/Context: Built on a mesa for defense, it is a profound example of organic urban development and a deep, enduring sense of place.
Cahokia
Definition: A pre-Columbian Native American city near present-day St. Louis.
Reading/Context: The largest urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, demonstrating sophisticated planning and large-scale earthwork constructions.
Monacan Indian Nation
Definition: A Native American tribe historically located in Virginia's Piedmont region.
Reading/Context: Their historical presence reminds us that urban planning in America existed long before European contact, with a deep connection to land.
Zuni Waffle Gardens
Definition: A traditional Zuni method of gardening using small, sunken beds to conserve water.
Reading/Context: An ancient, sustainable agricultural technique adapted to an arid environment, showing sophisticated land and water management.
Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan
Definition: Teotihuacan: A massive ancient Mesoamerican city in Mexico. Tenochtitlan: The capital of the Aztec Empire.
Reading/Context: Both were massive, brilliantly planned cities with monumental architecture, complex water systems, and grid-like layouts.
Monte Albán (Oaxaca)
Definition: A large pre-Columbian archaeological site and the former capital of the Zapotec civilization.
Reading/Context: A grand ceremonial center built on a flattened mountaintop, showcasing advanced engineering and urban design.
Thirteen Towers at Chankillo
Definition: An ancient solar observatory in Peru.
Reading/Context: One of the oldest astronomical observatories in the Americas, demonstrating sophisticated understanding of solar movements.
Hull House Maps
Definition: Groundbreaking social maps created by Jane Addams and colleagues.
Reading/Context: Used data visualization to document the concentration of poverty, immigration, and disease in Chicago, pioneering the use of maps for social reform.
Radburn, NJ
Definition: An early planned community (1929) known for its "superblock" layout.
Reading/Context: Featured the separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, a concept that influenced later suburban planning but contrasts with Jacobs' interconnected street grid.
Vinegar Hill (Charlottesville)
Definition: A historically Black neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Reading/Context: Largely demolished in the 1960s under urban renewal, representing the widespread destruction of thriving minority communities.
Border Vacuums
Definition: A term coined by Jane Jacobs for large, single-use zones that create dead edges.
Reading/Context: Examples include campuses, rail yards, and highways. They kill street life and pedestrian activity along their borders.
San Francisco Slow Streets
Definition: A program that limits through-traffic on certain residential streets.
Reading/Context: Aims to create safer spaces for walking and biking, a form of city-led tactical urbanism for neighborhood streets.
Janette Sadik-Khan
Definition: A former NYC transportation commissioner.
Reading/Context: Famously used tactical urbanism to rapidly transform NYC's streets, adding plazas and bike lanes, proving that change can happen quickly.
11th Street Bridge Park (Washington, DC)
Definition: A project to convert an old freeway bridge into an elevated park.
Reading/Context: An ambitious adaptive reuse project designed to connect communities and serve as a new cultural and recreational space.
Portland, OR
Definition: A city renowned for its urban growth boundary and progressive land-use planning.
Reading/Context: A leading U.S. example of using policy tools like a UGB to contain sprawl and promote sustainable urban form.
Copenhagen, Denmark
Definition: A global leader in bicycle infrastructure and pedestrian-oriented urban design.
Reading/Context: Its extensive network of green cycle routes and public spaces makes it a model for sustainable mobility and livability.
Freiburg, Germany (Including Vauban)
Definition: A city known for its strong environmental policies and the Vauban district.
Reading/Context: Vauban is a pioneering car-free, sustainable neighborhood that emphasizes green urbanism, solar power, and community living.
The 100 Year Life
Definition: The concept that people are living longer, requiring cities and housing to adapt.
Reading/Context: Impacts housing need (e.g., ageing in place), transportation, and social infrastructure to support multi-stage lives.
Quinta Monroy (Alejandro Aravena)
Definition: A social housing project in Chile famous for its "half-a-house" design.
Reading/Context: Residents are provided with a robust, incomplete core that they can expand over time, a innovative model for incremental, affordable housing.
Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs)
Definition: Neighborhoods or buildings with a high concentration of elderly residents.
Reading/Context: Identifying NORCs allows cities to target services and support to help seniors age in place successfully.
Beacon Hill Village
Definition: A pioneering nonprofit model where members pay dues to access services.
Reading/Context: Provides a support network of services (transportation, home repair) that allows seniors to age in place in their own homes and community.
Denver Affordable Housing Revolving Fund
Definition: A city fund that provides loans and grants to support affordable housing.
Reading/Context: A financial tool used to fund the development and preservation of housing for low- and middle-income residents.
NYC's "City of Yes"
Definition: A comprehensive zoning reform initiative in New York City.
Reading/Context: Aims to address the housing crisis, economic growth, and sustainability by updating outdated zoning rules.
Cheonggyecheon River (Seoul)
Definition: A major urban restoration project that removed an elevated highway and uncovered a buried stream.
Reading/Context: A world-famous example of stream daylighting that created a vibrant public river park and improved the city's environment.
Ciclovía (Bogotá)
Definition: A weekly event where city streets are closed to cars and opened for cyclists and pedestrians.
Reading/Context: A pioneering initiative that reclaims street space for people on a massive scale, promoting public health and community.
Bryant Park
Definition: A successful public park in Midtown Manhattan.
Reading/Context: Revitalized from a dangerous space into a vibrant one by applying William "Holly" Whyte's principles of movable chairs, food, and pedestrian access.
Atlanta's BeltLine
Definition: A massive project transforming a -mile railroad corridor into a multi-use trail and transit loop.
Reading/Context: An ambitious green infrastructure project aiming to connect neighborhoods, promote transit, and spur economic development.