Making City Planning Work

by Allan B. Jacobs

Paperback book.

323 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1978

About the author

Allan B. Jacobs was an urban designer, renowned for his publications and research on urban design. His well-known paper "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto", written with Donald Appleyard, describes how cities should be laid out.
Prior to teaching at Berkeley, Professor Jacobs taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked on planning projects in the City of Pittsburgh and for the Ford Foundation in Calcutta, India, and spent eight years as Director of the San Francisco Department of City Planning. In 1978 Jacobs presented his ‘Making City Planning Work’ that offered reflections on his experiences as the San Francisco planning director from 1967 to 1975 and guided on bureaucratic and political processes navigation that often hamper the realization of desired planning policies and outcomes.
His other books include ‘Looking at Cities’ (1985); ‘Great Streets’ (1993) and ‘The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards’ (with Elizabeth Macdonald and Yodan Rofé, 2003), which both offer case studies that reveal the key elements of successful streets; and ‘The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations’ (2011), a compendium of his career and thinking about cities. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berkeley Citation, and the Kevin Lynch Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jacobs taught in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley from 1975 until 2001, teaching courses in city planning and urban design and serving twice as the department's chair. He then became a Professor emeritus and a consultant in city planning and urban design with projects in California, Oregon, and Brazil, among others.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it provides a rare glimpse at the daily life of a city planner. Second, it immerse the reader in the strange world of politics in San Francisco in the late 1960s and 1970s. Third, it shows how some of the great planning ideas of that era set the stage for today's housing crisis.

The renowned Allan Jacobs had taught urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania when the City of San Francisco, with the support of longtime local planner T.J. "Jack" Kent, poached him to run its Planning Department in 1967. Jacobs ran the Department until 1974, at which point he and Kent moved to spend the rest of their lives in fruitful contemplation at Berkeley. Those seven active years, however, provided Jacobs with the concrete understanding of planning that guided all his later work, and thus shaped the city planning discipline's conception of itself.

As in many cities, San Francisco's Planning Department had a wide ambit but little clear power. It's heft, such as it was, came from city requirements that it advice on most projects, which advice the City Planning Commission (which had final say on all "staff" recommendations) and the mayor had to consider. Jacobs at first lamented that the city charter, distinct independent agencies, and civil service rules meant he could not do much of anything on his own. The Redevelopment Authority under Justin Herman had all the real money and power, and the Department of Public Works was singularly committed to expanding roads. Jacobs thus acted entrepreneurially. He applied for and administered Urban Beautification grants through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, and used them to get the Parks Department and Public Works to coordinate with his department. He also leveraged the "Federally Assisted Code Enforcement" (FACE) program to engage in neighborhood-supported planning in areas like Bernal Heights, and to counteract the bulldozing tendency of the Redevelopment Authority.

When federal categorical grants dried up in the Nixon administration, and when new federal authorities tried to synthesize grant and planning responsibility in the mayor's office, Jacobs pivoted. He began writing large, visionary planning documents and presenting them to the public to win political support. In 1971 he barnstormed and drummed up the pressure for the city to pass the Urban Design Guidelines, providing his department and the commission with the discretionary review of almost all new building designs. In 1972 his surveys of neighborhood groups and new citywide density plan forced the Board of Supervisors to pass the citywide Height and Bulk ordinance, which sharply limited the size of any new buildings.

Jacobs remained frustrated that developers and urban politicos like Mayor Joseph Alioto still had the most clout in deciding urban issues. But his book shows how an independent actor could use a bully pulpit and outside support to create a niche for himself and his ideas. Unfortunately, it seems much of Jacobs's efforts to limit the size and extent of building in San Francisco made the city's housing as expensive as it is today. Jacobs might have won more of the battle than he admits, but he might have been less than ecstatic about the spoils of his victory.

[Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit repetitive in its prose overall, but presented in a very conversational and accessible way. Provides a close look at planning activities in the late 60s and early 70s and has interesting and illustrative discussions about the various big issues of the period (Transamerica, US Steel, international market center, etc) and the larger picture actions of planning in the Urban Design Plan and height and bulk ordinance. Enjoyed this book overall and found the chapter on the federal FACE program and local code enforcement actions to be extremely interesting. That chapter adds nuance to some of the rehab work funded by the federal government when we typically only talk about bulldozing and urban renewal, which I found surprising and worthy of a deeper look.