Livable Cities·Livable Streets:Research On Humanism Urban Design Theory And Practice Of Allan B.Jacobs

Allan B.Jacobs(Dec.29,1929)played a pivotal role in fields of urban planning and urban design in the late-19th-century America.He was appointed by the University of Pennsylvania and University of California,Berkeley.Prior to his tenure at Berkeley,Jacobs served as the director of city planning for the City of San Francisco from 1967-1975 during which the department finished the first citywide urban design plan in the US under his leadership.He has also served as a consultant in city planning and urban design to many cities worldwide.Wealth of experience made Jacobs the excellent pioneer,practitioner as well as educator with rich theoretical and practical achievement in fields of urban planning and urban design.He has inspired and helped students and practitioners all over the world,profoundly influencing the livability research in urban design.According to Jacobs' 3 roles,namely pioneer,practitioner and educator,this research first delineated his ideas and contribution in 3 aspects as theory research,program practice and subject development.The research then analyzed Jacobs' status and contribution in both longitudinal and cross aspects with the development and evolution of urban design in the 20 th century and a comparative study between Jacobs and major representatives in urban design field between 1960 s and 1990 s.As a pioneer of humanism urban design,Jacobs laid great emphasis on physical environment and established the target system of humanism urban design.In his research,he focused on daily life and human-scale environment,which can be concluded as livability research.He constantly stressed that planners and designers should consider the physical environment from the users' perspectives and create density,diversity and mixed land use for cities.In theoretical aspect,he successfully created the basic framework for physical environment.As a typical and enthusiastic practitioner,Jacobs valued the implementation a lot,especially public participation within the implementing process.Jacobs practiced for more than sixties years in more than 10 cities worldwide.The process of making San Francisco Urban Design Plan and its research products are exceptionally valuable in urban research and still influential.In all,Jacobs is a capable practitioner.He converted his theoretical framework into practice guidance and achieved urban goals by improvement of physical environment.As an excellent educator,Jacobs laid the foundation for urban design in Department of City and Regional Planning,UC Berkeley.Along with Appleyard etc.,Jacobs brought a resurgence of interest in the physical environment.Prior to their appointments to their positions at Berkeley,the Department of City and Regional Planning was for the most part statistically and economically oriented.Meanwhile,he followed Mumford's teaching method to bring students onto street to look at cities and later developed it into a systematic observation method,serving as research support for practice.Jacobs received his professional education around 1950 s and mainly practiced in 1970 s.Ethos and urban planning field greatly changed during the 20 years.Jacobs' theory and practice were both similar to the historic background and unique because of his personal experience.This research concluded it into four aspects as emphasis on physical environment,public participation,diversity and observation on foot.Therefore,this research came to the conclusion that Jacobs' theory and practice were mainly involved in two fields as environment-behavior field and procedure-process field.In fact,research of environment-behavior has a long history in UC Berkeley.Having developed for around 40 years since 1930 s,it peaked in 1970 s where lots of relevant scholars emerged here,including Amos Rapopport,Donald Appleyard,Christopher Alexander,Clare Cooper-Marcus and Peter Bosselmann,etc.And Jacobs is one of them.He contributed to and profoundly influenced the development of urban design in practice and education,inherited and developed the Humanism urban design as well as laid the foundation of New Urbanism in 1990 s.