Jane Jacobs has many excellent points in her treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities including a preface titled Illustrations: "The scenes that illustrate this book are all about us. For illustrations, please look closely at real cities." In taking her suggestion, I realized that Hiawatha, a Place for Arts and Business, in Seattle's Central District, may be the only place I have personally participated in a dense, diverse city neighborhood community.
Working in Hiawatha for two years, I took part in a daily "ballet" of arrivals, rituals, and departures. I ordered an americano every morning around 9:30 at Cafe Weekend, where I made small talk with the barista and then carried my ceramic mug next door to my desk facing the storefront window, where I watched others carry out their routines and rituals.
In Hiawatha I had coworkers, friends, and also public acquaintances of a type I rarely experience living in Seattle. These included the other cafe regulars, the neighboring business owners, and the resident artists of the Hiawatha Lofts Artspace building. Once when I locked myself out of the office accidentally, I was let in by an acquaintance whom I had never spoken to before; regardless, we trusted one another.
Hiawatha has public characters, several of them, such as the cafe owners, the Circle Stewards who tend the traffic circle garden, the building manager, my yoga instructor, and I'm sure, others to other people. I wasn't familiar with the custom Jacobs describes of leaving spare keys at neighborhood establishments until I saw it happen at Cafe Weekend.
As a neighborhood with some planning attention from the City and three intentional communities of different sorts (Artspace, Jackson Place Cohousing, and Climbing Water P-Patch) as anchors, it is affirming to see that community has in fact taken root in Hiawatha in a genuine way. It is also refreshing that 50 years after publication of Death and Life, Jacobs' ideas have been implemented to success.
Jane Jacobs would be pleased to know that Hiawatha demonstrates many aspects of the Generators of Diversity about which she wrote:
The 34 dots on my drawing below each represent a person who I got to know at least as an acquaintance while working in Hiawatha. The names are the institutions or places where most of those interactions happened.
What I love about Hiawatha are all of the opportunities the neighborhood afforded me to meet and interact with people in public places on a regular basis. This liveliness expanded my community in the broad sense, set the stage to make meaningful connections, and helped stave off that urban loneliness.
Working in Hiawatha for two years, I took part in a daily "ballet" of arrivals, rituals, and departures. I ordered an americano every morning around 9:30 at Cafe Weekend, where I made small talk with the barista and then carried my ceramic mug next door to my desk facing the storefront window, where I watched others carry out their routines and rituals.
In Hiawatha I had coworkers, friends, and also public acquaintances of a type I rarely experience living in Seattle. These included the other cafe regulars, the neighboring business owners, and the resident artists of the Hiawatha Lofts Artspace building. Once when I locked myself out of the office accidentally, I was let in by an acquaintance whom I had never spoken to before; regardless, we trusted one another.
Hiawatha has public characters, several of them, such as the cafe owners, the Circle Stewards who tend the traffic circle garden, the building manager, my yoga instructor, and I'm sure, others to other people. I wasn't familiar with the custom Jacobs describes of leaving spare keys at neighborhood establishments until I saw it happen at Cafe Weekend.
As a neighborhood with some planning attention from the City and three intentional communities of different sorts (Artspace, Jackson Place Cohousing, and Climbing Water P-Patch) as anchors, it is affirming to see that community has in fact taken root in Hiawatha in a genuine way. It is also refreshing that 50 years after publication of Death and Life, Jacobs' ideas have been implemented to success.
Jane Jacobs would be pleased to know that Hiawatha demonstrates many aspects of the Generators of Diversity about which she wrote:
- Mixed primary uses
- Small blocks
- Aged buildings
- Concentration of people
The 34 dots on my drawing below each represent a person who I got to know at least as an acquaintance while working in Hiawatha. The names are the institutions or places where most of those interactions happened.
What I love about Hiawatha are all of the opportunities the neighborhood afforded me to meet and interact with people in public places on a regular basis. This liveliness expanded my community in the broad sense, set the stage to make meaningful connections, and helped stave off that urban loneliness.
Comments
Post a Comment