Public and Private: Rereading Jane Jacobs

Abstract

Jane Jacobs's concept of mixed use, developed in her 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, can be seen not only as an attack on the functionalist separation of uses, but as a challenge to the split between domestic and public life. Mixed use implicitly subverts notions held deeply since the 19th century—the home as “refuge” and its corollary, the street as “dangerous”—with all of the gender associations that have historically been embedded in this imagery. While gender is not an explicit theme in this work, Jacobs's critique of modern planning and zoning implicitly addresses the issue of separate gendered spheres of public and private life, alluding to an alternative, inclusionary vision of public life.