Washington, DC: A Jane's Walk

Critically Examining Gentrification and the "Self-Destruction of Diversity"

Jane Jacobs: Life, Death, and Rebirth

I have a love for Jane Jacobs the same way a doctrinaire neoconservative reverently worships Leon Trotsky. Discovering her system of conceptualizing urban environments as quasi-ecological systems was like learning to see color for the first time. The influence of her theory and the legend of her Greenwich Village activism against that Great Satan of city planning, Robert Moses, has earned her a place in the annals of urbanism as iconic as Rachel Carson’s in environmentalism or Betty Friedan’s in feminism.¹ However, decades of new urban challenges that have emerged since her most influential commentary have threatened to render her irrelevant—or even outright wrong.² In this post, I will attempt a Jacobs-inspired approach to one of the most troubling tensions in modern urban communities: gentrification. What can she still teach us?

For the uninitiated, Jane Jacobs was an American-Canadian author and urban studies theorist who rose to prominence in the 1960s, during the peak of postwar city planning and its infatuation with heavy-handed slum clearances, “urban renewal,” and automobile-centric design. Her magnum opus, 1961’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, put forth a vision of urban communities as complex systems with intricate feedback mechanisms that could be stimulated to auto-regulate or to auto-cannibalize, roundly rejecting contemporary technocratic notions of top-down planning and centralization.³ Death and Life advocated strongly for mixed-use spaces, density, and diverse neighborhoods, putting forth four urban “generators of diversity” necessary for community flourishing: mixed-used districts, short blocks and frequent intersections, a variety of aged and new buildings for neighborhoods, and dense concentrations of urban populations.⁴ The concepts formulated in Death and Life, radical for their time, have been enduringly popular, and are now established thought.⁵

Of course, Jacobs’ salience in modern discourse may be a product of our current urban moment. I suspect that under the specter of the housing crisis, pandemic-era pedestrianization, and YIMBYism, many people are rediscovering Death and Life and are extremely taken with its vision of communal safety, vibrancy, and dynamism (I suspect this because this was me).

My fear is that the modern Jacobs renaissance will too easily look past problems in her theory, ultimately leading to imperfect solutions to the challenges confronting us: the blights of the 2020s may not be well-served by a treatment from the 1960s. While beloved by many, there is also a prominent school of thought that questions her small-scale, community-based urbanism in an era of extreme inequality, financialized housing, and racialized dispossession.⁶ On the centennial of her birth in 2016, amid the outpouring of publications evaluating her legacy, many characterized the urbanism of Death and Life as race-blind and pro-gentrification.⁷

Gentrification and Self-Destruction

Gentrification is the central issue for today’s analysis, because it has been an uncomfortable topic for the modern urbanist movement and also has been central to the controversies around Death and Life.⁸ Jacobs’ tendency to treat race as a secondary concern has been the focal point for much of the criticism directed at her work. In Death and Life, she recognizes the fact of socioeconomic inequalities in cities but regards them as symptoms of problems in the urban ecosystem and the arrangement of communities, not as causal factors themselves.⁹ As the discourse around gentrification (a term coined in 1964, after the publication of Death in Life, referring to the displacement of minority groups from their urban neighborhoods due to an influx of upper-middle class whites who price out the original residents¹⁰) grew prominent in the consciousness of American urbanists, Jacobs’ community-centered approach seemed less and less relevant in the face of an issue centered so heavily around racial inequality.

However, some have recognized that Jacobs did offer insights relevant to gentrification in Death and Life. Chapter 13, “The Self-Destruction of Diversity,” has been cited as potentially valuable for the study of gentrification.¹¹ Said “self-destruction” refers to a process Jacobs describes as follows:

“A diversified mixture of uses at some place in the city becomes outstandingly popular and successful as a whole. Because of the location's success, which is invariably based on flourishing and magnetic diversity, ardent competition for space in this locality develops… Whichever one or few uses have emerged as the most profitable in the locality will be repeated and repeated, crowding out and overwhelming less profitable forms of use.”¹²

How reconcilable is her theory of self-destruction with our modern understanding of gentrification? I took a look at this question, using Washington, DC as a case study.

Why DC? Washington, DC holds the dubious distinction of being a national poster child for gentrification. Its history reflects many of classic patterns of gentrification: a city that was 71% Black in 1970 falling to just 41% by 2020;¹³ historically black communities being eroded to the point of closing down once-thriving churches,¹⁴ and white homeowners returning from the suburbs, renovating tidy rowhouses along the way.¹⁵ DC is especially instructive because it bucks national trends—in most of the U.S. since 2000, the dominant pattern of neighborhood change has been poverty concentration, with low-income residents moving into new areas, rather than being displaced from them.¹⁶

“Gentrification” can be difficult to cleanly quantify and visualize, because it’s a pretty nebulous term. It has the racialized element of white displacement of black residents, but also encapsulates other socioeconomic dynamics. Taking inspiration from a University of California, Merced study, which mapped gentrification in DC using factors such as the decline of the black population share, increases in home value, increases in median household income, and increases in college-educated residents,¹⁷ I put together a Gentrification Index as a single metric to (very roughly) gauge the rate of gentrification in DC over time. This index is the mean of normalized measures of percent decrease in black population, percent increase in white population, percent increase in home value, percent increase in median household income, and percent increase in college-educated residents. It scales from 0 to 1.

This map depicting the gentrification index across DC in two periods from 2020-2023 suggests the pressure of gentrification across the city eased somewhat in the 2010s. At the same time, the geographic hotspots of gentrification shifted from the Shaw-Downtown area further southeast toward historically black neighborhoods near the Anacostia River and northeast to the area around the Catholic University of America. These patterns can be compared with Jacobs’ “self-destruction of diversity” to investigate the relationship between her theoretical framework and contemporary dynamics of gentrification.

While Jacobs’ “self-destruction of diversity” is often discussed as analogous to gentrification, there are key differences. Jacobs’s theorized phenomenon is an economic process, not a sociopolitical one. Drawing on the examples of Eighth and Third Streets in New York, she describes popular commercial districts with a mixture of enterprises “sorting out,” with the most popular class of business (restaurants on Eighth Street and nightclubs on Third Street) dominating, causing the district to lose its diversity (not racial diversity but the diversity of enterprises). This process, Jacobs writes, leaves districts “beached, in the wake of popularity that had moved away.”¹⁸ Unlike gentrification, the “self-destruction of diversity” is not racialized pertains more to local enterprise as opposed to housing price. Yet, it mirrors the logic of gentrification: trendy shops, restaurants, cafes, and clubs pile into neighborhoods, sparking fierce competition and rising costs that gradually displace the original inhabitants: “Since so many want to get in, those who get in or stay in will be self-sorted by the expense.”¹⁹ Though she wrote years before the term “gentrification” entered the lexicon, Jacobs anticipated its essential narrative, but saw it through the lens of small business rather than real estate.

The patterns of gentrification in DC align closely with Jacobs’ theory. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs describes the phenomenon of “moving downtown centers,”²⁰ a dynamic that mirrors the shifting geography of gentrification pressure observed in the city. Notably, the areas in eastern DC where gentrification pressure intensified from 2013-2023 are communities seeing major developments of mixed-used districts: Brookland saw the construction of a large mixed-used apartment complex,²¹ and the St. Elizabeths East campus has been a hub for major commercial redevelopment.²² These communities appear to be in the process of creating the functional diversity Jacobs celebrates in Death and Life. However, the marked rise in the gentrification index in these areas may serve as an early warning that they are at risk of succumbing to the process of “self-destruction.”

Jacobsian self-destruction therefore proves itself to be a potentially powerful tool for analyzing gentrification, as it roughly captures the same problems of gentrification while reframing the discussion. Gentrification as a policy issue suffers from a kind of gigantism: wrapped in that term are both beneficial and harmful developments.²³ There is room for nuance in our consideration of displacement, economic investment, racial inequality, and land-use policy, but the catch-all term “gentrification” is unwieldy and imprecise. Take the Gentrification Index I built for this post as an example: it measures everything from racialized displacement to educational attainment all at once. The opportunity afforded by thinking about “self-destruction” is that it can help us deal with similar problems while refining the scope of our analysis onto more tangible processes. As such, Jacobs’ framework not only parallels gentrification but also helps clarify it.

Challenges to “Competitive Diversion"

Toward the end of chapter 13, Jacobs discusses solutions to the problem of self-destruction. She offers three remedies: “zoning for diversity,” “the staunchness of public buildings,” and “competitive diversion;” singling out the last as being the most significant. The other two are defensive tools that can remedy or slow the process of self-destruction, and act as “windbreaks,” but competitive diversion, Jacobs writes, can get at the heart of the problem.²⁴ She proposes that “the demand for lively and diversified city areas is too great for the supply. If outstandingly successful city localities are to withstand the forces of self-destruction… the sheer supply of diversified, lively, economically viable city localities must be increased.”²⁵

Coincidentally, in 2016 DC underwent a major overhaul of its zoning policy, updating its 1958 zoning map to codify mixed-use zones, expand the downtown area, and upzone existing residential areas, with the intent of allowing for increased urbanization and encourage mixed development.²⁶ Through this process, DC has theoretically increased its supply of mixed-use districts, implementing Jacobs’ “competitive diversion” to take pressure off gentrifying areas. How does it look practically?

This map indicates mixed results. While communities in the Walter Reed-Downtown axis reclassified as mixed-used zones saw relief in gentrification pressure from 2013-2023, gentrification pressure actually worsened in upzoned or rezoned districts in Riggs Park, Brookland, and on the east bank of the Anacostia. Simply increasing the supply of functional diversity across the city does not seem to have been successful at reversing trends of self-destruction. Why could that be?

One explanation is that competitive diversion operates at a higher strategic level and cannot mitigate trends on smaller spatial or time scales. Individual neighborhood dynamics can have more influence over immediate changes in home prices or displacement, while the impact of city-wide rezoning would take more time to manifest and would affect a larger area with less intensity.

However, I think Jacobs may have mischaracterized the nature of demand for mixed-use zones. There is a problem of excludability and rivalry to the mixed-use district. While the individual enterprises composing a mixed-use district very straightforwardly deal in private goods, which are excludable (they can be limited only to paying customers) and rivalrous (one customer’s use of this good or service precludes another’s), the district itself’s excludability and rivalry are much fuzzier. While elements of the mixed-use district like residential units, storefront space, and office space are private goods, things like public spaces, safety, and ambience are not. Demand for mixed-use spaces comes not just from a clientele intent on buying and selling things in the mixed-use space but from people who just want to be there recreationally. This creates a much more complex relationship between supply and demand that cannot be easily remedied with an increase in supply. In the same way just adding one more lane to a highway will not resolve traffic, the self-destruction of diversity might not respond so easily to competitive diversion.

Just one more lane, bro.

Conclusion

The Death and Life of American Cities remains a potent tool for urbanist analysis, and Jacobs’ insights continue to resonate. Reevaluations and rereadings of the text can clarify contemporary policy issues and aid our understanding of urban community change. Jane Jacobs is rightfully a heroic figure to many urbanists and her writing remains foundational. Yet engagement with her ideas should always be careful and measured.

One of the enduring strengths of her theory is its accessibility—anyone can begin to understand it simply by paying attention to the city around them! Hers is not a particularly esoteric or technical theory, but one present in the urban environments surrounding us. Since 2007, cities have hosted Jane’s Walks, inviting residents to tour their communities and to put Jane Jacobs’ ideas in dialogue with lived reality, and what I’ve done in this post is nothing more than a simple geospatial Jane’s Walk. We might still walk with Jacobs, but we need to walk farther and see more.

1. Martin, Douglas. 2006. “Jane Jacobs, Social Critic Who Redefined and Championed Cities, Is Dead at 89 (Published 2006).” The New York Times, April 26, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/books/jane-jacobs-social-critic-who-redefined-and-championed-cities-is-dead.html.

2. Hock, Jennifer, Nathan Storring and Samuel Zipp. 2021. “What About Jane?” Urban Omnibus. https://urbanomnibus.net/2021/03/what-about-jane/.

3. “Jane Jacobs.” 2010. Project for Public Spaces. https://www.pps.org/article/jjacobs-2.

4. Jacobs, Jane. 1992. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. N.p.: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 150-151.

5. Weingarten, Marc. 2016. “Jane Jacobs, the writer who changed the face of the modern city.” The Guardian, September 21, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/21/jane-jacobs-modern-city-biography-new-york-greenwich-village.

6. Hock, Storring, and Zipp, “What About Jane?”

7. Laurence, Peter. 2019. “Jane's Urban Ethics: Jane Jacobs on Racism, Capital, Power, and the Plantation Mentality.” Cities 91 (August): 29-38.

8. Music, Alex. 2022. “McMain Streets, Gentrification, and the Futility of Authenticity as Urbanism Becomes Mainstream.” Strong Towns. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/14/mcmain-streets-gentrification-and-the-futility-of-authenticity-as-urbanism-becomes-mainstream.

9. Hock, Storring, and Zipp, “What About Jane?”

10. “History of Gentrification in America: A Timeline.” n.d. Next City. Accessed July 15, 2025. https://nextcity.org/history-of-gentrification#in1964.

11. Hock, Storring, and Zipp, “What About Jane?”

12. Jacobs, Death and Life, 243.

13. Overly, Steven, Delece Smith-Barrow, Katy O'Donnell, and Ming Li. 2022. “How Gentrification in Washington Changed Local Black Political Power.” Politico, April 15, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/15/washington-dc-gentrification-black-political-power-00024515.

14. Kiger, Patrick. 2022. “Understanding Gentrification In D.C.” Metro DC Neighborhood Guide. https://neighborhoods.wetaguides.org/neighborhood/understanding-gentrification-dc.

15. Overly, Smith-Barrow, O’Donnell, and Li, “"How Gentrification in Washington Changed.”

16. “American Neighborhood Change.” n.d. University of Minnesota Law School. https://law.umn.edu/institute-metropolitan-opportunity/studies/housing-and-planning/american-neighborhood-change.

17. Golash-Boza, Tanya, Patrick Coldivar-Valencia, Carmen Salazar, and Louis Perz. 2022. “Mapping Gentrification in Washington D.C.” ArcGIS StoryMaps. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/009773cc5c224421a66d1ce9ff089849.

18. Jacobs, Death and Life, 244.

19. Jacobs, Death and Life, 243.

20. Jacobs, Death and Life, 247.

21. Paul, Shilpi. 2011. “Brookland's Monroe Street Market Breaks Ground.” DC UrbanTurf. https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/monroe_street_market_breaks_ground/4542.

22. UrbanTurf Staff. 2024. “The 1,000 Residential Units On The Boards In Congress Heights.” UrbanTurf. https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_1000_units_on_the_boards_in_congress_heights/22338.

23. Kiger, “Understanding Gentrification In D.C.”

24. Jacobs, Death and Life, 255.

25. Jacobs, Death and Life, 255.

26. Beyer, Scott. 2016. “Washington, DC Reformed Its Zoning Code; Now Time To Ditch The Height Limits.” Forbes, January 29, 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/01/29/washington-dc-reformed-its-zoning-code-now-time-to-ditch-the-height-limits/.