Chapter_1

«美国大城市的生与死»

(THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMRICAN CITIES)

美国女作家简.雅各布斯(Jane Jacobs)

1 Introduction (1) This book is and attack on city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those now taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday supplements and women’s magazines. My attack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods or hairsplitting about fashions in design. It is an attack, rather, on the principles and aims that have shaped modern, orthodox city planning and rebuilding.(2002.2.8)

(2) In setting forth different principles, I shall mainly be writing about common, ordinary things: for instance, what kinds of city streets are safe and what kinds are not; why some city parks are marvelous and others are vice traps and death traps; why some slums stay slums and other slums regenerate themselves even against financial and official opposition; what makes downtowns shift their centers; what, if anything, is a city neighborhood, and what jobs, if any, neighborhoods in great cities do. In short, I shall be writing about how cities work in real life, because this is the only way to learn what principles of planning and what practices in rebuilding can promote social and economic vitality in cities, and what practices and principle will deaden these attributes.(2002.2.8)

译文:

介绍 (1)这是一本抨击现今城市规划和改造的书。应该说书中的大多数内容,尝试着介绍新的城市规划和改造原则,这些原则不同于学校里所传授的东西,不同于周日特刊的计划,也不同于从妇女杂志中所看到的,甚至是与那些原则完全相反的。我的抨击并不是以关于改建手法的模棱两可的双关语为基础,也不是对设计的时尚吹毛求疵。它所抨击的是那些形成现代和传统城市规划和改造的原则和目的。

(2)为了阐明这些不同的原则,我从那些普通的事物写起:例如,什么样的城市街道是安全的,而什么样的是不安全的;为什么有的城市公园是美妙的不可思议的,而有的则成为了城市藏污纳垢的死角;为什么有些贫民窟长久保持原样有些不顾财政和政府的反对不断生成;是什么让城市不断变换他们的中心;什么是一个城市的临近地区,它有担当了什么样的一种职能。简而言之,我要写的是城市在现实生活中是如何运作的,因为这是学习规划原则和怎样用改建来提升城市的社会和经济活力的唯一方法,通过这样的学习,也能知道什么样的原则和实践会扼杀这些活力。(2002.2.9 benbentiao 译)

(3) There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend—the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars—we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-before-yesterday’s suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and perhaps even solve the traffice problem.(2002.2.9)

(4) But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. . Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.(2000.2.9)

(3)有一种理想的“神话”,前提是我们拥有足够的资金——通常得上百亿美金——我们便可在十年内清除所有的贫困区,隐藏起从前城市中那些庞大、阴暗、沉闷地带内所呈现出的衰败景象,转而安置飘泊的中产阶级,沉淀及其附带的游离资金,这样甚至可以解决交通问题。(2002.2.10 永远的埃及 译)

(4)现在看看我们用一开始的几十亿作了什么:低收入居民区变成了错误,破坏艺术行为和社会绝望的中心,代替了贫民窟给社会带来的影响。中层收入居民区的无趣和对一切轻快和有活力的城市生活的管辖让人觉得惊奇。奢华的小别墅妄图用一种粗俗的设计手法区减轻他们的愚蠢。文化中心里不能找到一个好的书店。除了流浪汉谁都不愿意去城市中心,因为那里是少数几个能供他们闲逛的场所。商业中心是标准的郊区连锁店的翻版。散步道不知位于何处,当然见不到散步的人,高速公路变成了城市的精华部分。这不是对城市的改造,这是对城市的毁坏。(2002.2.11 benbentiao 译)

(5) Under the surface, these accomplishments prove even poorer than their poor pretenses. They seldom aid the city areas around them, as in theory they are supposed to. These amputated areas typically develop galloping gangrene. To house people in this planned fashion, price tags are fastened on the population, and each sorted-out chunk of price-tagged populace lives in growing suspicion and tension against the surrounding city. When two or more such hostile islands are juxtaposed the result is called “a balanced neighborhood.” Monopolistic shopping centers and monumental cultural centers cloak, under the public relations hoohaw, the subtraction of commerce, and of culture too, from the intimate and casual life of cities.(2002.2.10)

(6) That such wonders may be accomplished, people who get marked with the planners’ hex signs are pushed about, expropriated, and uprooted much as if they were the subjects of a conquering power. Thousands of small businesses are destroyed, and their proprietors ruined, with hardly a gesture at compensation. Whole communities are torn apart and sown to the winds, with a reaping of cynicism, resentment and despair that must be heard and seen to be believed. A group of clergymen in Chicago, appalled at the fruits of planned city rebuilding there, ask,

(7) Could job have been thinking of Chicago when he wrote: (8) Here are men that alter their neighbor’s landmark…shoulder the poor aside, conspire to oppress the friendless.

(5)事实上,这些整治比它们那些有够衰的pretense们更衰. 它们极少如它们的理论所臆断的那样,在自身周围增加新的城市环境.相反,这些从城市机体上截下来的部分往往发育成急性坏疽: 在时尚的"规划"指导下, 居民人口被贴上"价格"的标签, 塞进某处组团. 而每一坨甄选出来带着价标的人口,则在与周围城区日益增长的怀疑与紧张关系中生长. 如果两个以上的互含敌意的组团被搁在了一起,那么我们就得到了一个"平衡社区". 在公共关系hoohaw的张罗下, 垄断型商业中心和纪念碑样的文化中心掩饰了商业和文化的匮乏 —- 而后两者, 在随意而亲切的都市生活中,曾是如此的丰富 (2002.2.12 除夕的鞭炮响过之后 Spade 译)

(6)这种奇迹或许可以实现,然而那些标上了规划师们具有蛊惑力的标志(注:猜想可能是指所住区域被规划)的人们遭排挤,家园被略夺,最终背井离乡,就像是好胜心下的战利品.成千上万的小商业被毁,它们的经营者遭损失.但几乎没有得到补偿的迹象.而整体社区被分裂,象种子般在风中撒落,带着嘲讽,怨恨和失望, 这些规划者必须看到也必须相信这些.一群惊骇于规划重建后芝加哥城市状况的牧师寻问道:

(7)当Job写下以下篇章时,是否联想到了芝加哥: (8)这儿的人们改变着周边标志性建筑物… 排挤着穷人,联和压迫着无依无靠的人们.

(9) Reap they the field that is none of theirs, strip they the vineyard wrongfully seized from its owner… (10) A cry goes up from the city streets, where wounded men lie groaning… (11) If so, he was also thinking of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco and a number of other places. The economic rationale of current city rebuilding is a hoax. The economics of city rebuilding do not rest soundly on reasoned investment of public tax subsides, as urban renewal theory proclaims, but also on vast, involuntary subsides wrung out of helpless site victims. And the increased tax returns from such sites, accruing to the cities as a result of this “investment,” are a mirage, a pitiful gesture against the ever increasing sums of public money needed to combat disintegration and instability that flow from the cruelly shaken-up city. The means to planned city rebuilding are as deplorable as the end.(2002.2.12)

(9)他们收割着不属于自己的土地, 清理着以不正当方式从别处掠夺来的葡萄园…

(10)受伤的人们躺在城市街道上呻吟着,传来阵阵哭泣声… (11)假若Job想到了芝加哥,那他也想到了纽约,费城,波世顿,华盛顿,圣鲁乙思,三藩市和其他一些地方.目前的城市重建经济原理只是一骗局.当前的城市重建经济学并不像城市更新理论所宣扬的,真正有效地建立在公民税收津贴的合理投资基础之上,而是依赖于从贫苦区里受害者处强行压榨来的巨额的津贴.为克服城市大改革所带来的分裂及不稳定性, 公共资金永远供不应求,而越来越多从贫苦区里得来的税收归拢于城市最终还是作为这样的投资.将这些税收用于其来源地,只是海市蜃楼,可悲可叹. (2002.2.13 qq00612 译)

(12)Meantime, all the art and science of city planning are helpless to stem decay—and the spiritlessness that precedes decay—in ever more massive swatches of cities. Nor can this decay be laid, reassuringly, to lack of opportunity to apply the arts of planning. It seems to matter little whether they are applied or not. Consider the Morningside Heights area in New York City. According to planning theory it should not be in trouble at all, for it enjoys a great aboudance of parkland, campus, playground and pleasant ground with magnificent river views. It is a famous educational center with splendid institutions—Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary, the Juilliard School of Music, and half a dozen others of eminent respectability. It is the beneficiary of good hospitals and churches. It has no industries. Its streets are zoned in the main against “incompatible uses “intruding into the preserves for solidly constructed, roomy, middle-and upper-class apartments. Yet by the early 1950’s Morningside Heights was becoming a slum so swiftly, the surly kind of slum in which people fear to walk the streets, that the situation posed a crisis for the institutions. They and the planning arms of the city government got together, applied more planning theory, wiped out the most run-down part of the area and built in its stead a middle-income housing project complete with shopping center, and a public housing project, all interspersed with air, light, sunshine and landscaping. This was hailed as a great demonstration in city saving.

(12)与此同时,城市规划理论与艺术对于城市局部地区的衰退无能为力——这种早在城市衰退之前便产生的无能——甚至在范围较广的示范区亦无可耐何. 城市规划艺术运用与否似乎并不重要,即使它得以施展,衰退依然避免不了,一定会发生的. 想想纽约的Morningside Heights区. 依照规划理论,本该没有任何问题的. 因为她拥有宽敞的停车场地,校园,操场及一个河景怡人的游戏场所.她还聚集了世界顶级的大学和研究机构—哥伦比亚大学,神学研究学会,朱利叶德音乐学院及其他6个杰出的广受尊敬的教研机构. 她享有设备完善的医院和宗教服务. 她没有工业,出于兼容性,被划区的街道直接通往稳固宽敞的中高层阶级的公寓里. 然而50年代前, Morningside Heights迅速沦为贫民窟. 人们不敢在那可怕的地方步行,这都成了规划研究院迫切解决的首要问题. 他们与政府规划部门合作, 应用更多的规划理论,清理了大多数荒废区域,以配有购物中心面向中等收入阶层的安居工程和另一个公众安居项目取而代之. 重建后的区域享有空气,光线,日照和怡人的景观. 作为挽救城市的大手笔,这个方案广受欢迎.

(13)After that, Morningside Heights went downhill even faster. (14)Nor is this an unfair or irrelevant example. In city after city, precisely the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are decaying. Less noticed, but equally significant, in city after city the wrong areas, in the light of planning theory, are refusing to decay. (15)Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design. This is the laboratory in which city planning should have been learning and forming and discipline (if such it can be called) have ignored the study of success and failure in real life, have been incurious about the reasons for unexpected success, and are guided instead by principles derived from the behavior and appearance of towns, suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs, and imaginary dream cities—from anything but cities themselves.(2002.2.13)

(16) If it appears that the rebuilt portions of cities and the endless new developments spreading beyond the cities are the reducing city and countryside alike to a monotonous, unnourishing gruel, this is not strange, It all comes, first-, second-third- or fourth-hand, out of the same intellectual dish or mush, a mush in which the qualities, necessities, advantages and behavior of great cities have been behavior of other and more inert types of settlements.

(13)然而,自那以后, Morningside Heights 每况愈下的速度更快了。 (14)Morningside Heights这个例子既不是不公正的,也不是同其他城市不相关的。一个城市接着一个城市,在规划理论指导下,那些精确规划了的区域正在衰退;一个城市接着一个城市,在规划理论指导下,那些精确规划了的区域拒绝衰退,尽管这拒绝不为人注意,其意义同样重大。 (15)城市是个巨大的实验室,其内可以反复试验城市营造和城市设计的成功与失败。正是在这个实验室里,城市规划应该不断学习,自我完善和自我约束(如果可以这样称呼的话)。恰恰相反,正是这个实验室忽略了对现时生活中成败的研究;正是这个实验室漠视了意外成功之缘由;也正是这个实验室,只是在从城镇,郊区,修养地,集会及梦幻城的行为与表象演绎得来的信条的指导下—-或者说任何方面的指导下来运行,而不是由城市本身领导下运行。(2002.2.14 qq00612 译)

(16)即便城市重建部分和无止尽更新发展显现出不单单使城市与乡村转变为一碗乏味且无营养的稀粥的情形,也不足为奇. 就算是碗长智力的玉米粥,它也只是按首要,次要,再次,更次来考虑问题. 在这碗玉米粥里,大城市的质量,必要性,优点和表征已完全和另外的及缺乏活力住宅群落的质量,必要性,优点和表征完全混淆在一起了. (2002.2.15 qq00612 译)

(17) There is nothing economically or socially inevitable about either the decay of old cities or the fresh-minted decadence of the new unurban urbanization. On the contrary no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are getting. Extraordinary governmental financial incentives have been require to achieve this degree of monotony, sterility and vulgarity. Decades of preaching, writing and exhorting by experts have gone into convincing us and our legislators that mush like this must be good for us, as long as it comes bedded with grass.

(18)Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect s of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building. Of cause planners, including the highwaymen with fabulous sums of money and enormous power at their disposal, are at a loss to make automobiles and cities compatible with one another. They do not know what to do with automobiles in cities because they do not know how to plan for workable and vital cities anyhow—with or without automobiles.

(17)对于旧城衰败和新近城市化地区刚开始的衰退, 经济因素与社会因素从来都是贯穿其中。相反,在整整25年里再也没有其他方面像经济与社会这两只手那样一心一意地致力将城市建设成现在这样。大量的政府财政支出用以成就今日城市之千篇一律,缺乏活力,鄙陋不堪的状况。 数十年来,专家们的说教、著述、劝诫使得立法者和我们相信像上述玉米粥那样的城市只要铺满草坪,就一定有利于我们。(2002.2.18 qq00612 译)

(18)人们出于方便,将城市弊端和城市规划中的败笔及令人失望处归咎于小汽车的不是。但与其说汽车是造成这种局面的原因,还不如说是我们在城市建设方面无能的一种表征。当然规划者,包括拥有惊人钱财和庞大处置权的拦路抢劫犯,都不知如何使小汽车同城市相互兼容。他们不知如何对付城市里的汽车问题因为他们不知如何规划运行良好,充满活力的城市—无论小汽车存在还是不存在。

(19)The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing number of planners and designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have solved the major problem of cities. Cities have much more intricate economic and social concerns than automobile traffic. How can you know what to try with traffic until you know how the city itself works, and what else it needs to do with its streets? You can’t.(2002.2.15) (20)It may be that we have became so feckless as people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.(2002.2.16) (21)Specifically, in the case of planning for cities, it is clear that a large number of good and earnest people do care deeply about building and renewing. Despite some corruption, and considerable greed for the other man’s vineyard, the intentions going into the messes we make are, on the whole, exemplary. Planners, architects of city design, and those they have led along with them in their beliefs are not consciously disdainful of the importance of knowing how things work. On the contrary, they have gone to great pains to learn what the saints and sages of modern orthodox planning have said about how cities ought to work and what ought to be good for people and businesses in them. They take this with such devotion that when contradictory reality intrudes, threatening to shatter their dearly won learning, they must shrug reality aside.(2002.2.17)

(19)小汽车的简单需求比起城市的复杂要求来,更容易被理解和满足。并且越来越多的城市规划设计师相信只要他们能解决交通问题,那么他们就能解决城市的主要问题。城市里存在着比汽车交通更为错综复杂的经济社会问题。 在你明白城市自身如何运作及她还需要哪些来维护城市道路之前,你岂能了解怎样处理交通问题。你了解不了的。(2002.2.19 qq00612 译)

(20)可能是我们变得和庸民(so feckless as people do in the rest of the world?)一样无能,可能是我们不再关心事物的内在规律,而只在乎事物表现出来的那种效果—-简单而快捷。如果是这样的话,我们的城市就几乎没什么希望,或者可能连我们社会中其它许多的事物也将如此。但我认为事实并非如此。(21)尤其是,就城市规划来说,显然有很多的善良热心的人们深切关心城市的建设与发展。尽管存在某程度上的腐败以及人与人之间的相互倾轧现实,人们对我们城市规划造成的烂摊子的种种改造设想,总的说来,可以作为我们的榜样。(不过)城市规划师、建筑师以及在他们观念影响下引导的那些人并非有意蔑视实事求是的重要性。相反,他们曾经不辞辛劳地去掌握当代正统的规划理论的圣贤们的理论,关于城市应当怎样运作,以及怎样做才是对城市中的人们及事物有益的。他们对这类理论深信不疑,以至于当事实与理论截然相反,并有可能打破他们好不容易学到的东西时,他们就理所应当地把事实抛在了一边。

(22)Consider, for example, the orthodox planning reaction to a district called the North End in Boston. This is an old, low-rent area merging into the heavy industry of the waterfront, and it is officially considered Boston’s worst slum and civic shame. It embodies attributes which all enlightened people know are evil because so many wise men have said they are evil. Not only is the North End bumped right up against industry, but worse still it has all kinds of working places and commerce mingled in the greatest complexity with its residences. It has the highest commerce mingled in the greatest complexity with its residences. It has the highest concentration of dwelling nits, on the land that is used for dwelling units, of any part of Boston, and indeed one of the highest concentrations to be found in any American city. It has little parkland. Children play in the streets. Instead of super-blocks or even decently large blocks, it has very small blocks; in planning parlance it is “badly cut up with wasteful streets.” Its buildings are old. Everything conceivable is presumably wrong with the North End. In orthodox planning terms, it is a three-dimensional textbook of “megalopolis” in the last stages of depravity. The North End is thus a recurring assignment for M.I.T. and Harvard planning and architectural students, who now and again pursue, under the guidance of their teachers, the paper exercise of converting it into super-blocks and park promenades, wiping away its nonconforming uses, transforming it to an ideal of order and gentility so simple it could be engraved on the head of a pin. (22)譬如,以正统的规划理论对波士顿一个称为North End的街区的分析为例,来看一看。这是一块融入位于滨水地带的重工业区的区域,陈旧而且租金低廉,被公认为是波士顿最糟糕的贫民区和城市的耻辱。它体现了所有文明人认为丑恶的特性—-因为那么多的高明人士都说过这些特性是丑恶的。不仅仅是由于该地区突出与工业区紧紧相邻,更糟糕的是它的各式各样的工作区和商业交易活动以最复杂的形式与居住区混合在一起。最频繁的商业交易活动和其居住区以最复杂的形式相混杂。在其用作建造住宅单元的岛上,拥有波士顿最密集的住宅单元,事实上也是在美国任何城市中所能找到的最密集的居住区之一。它几乎没什么公用场地。孩子们都在大街上玩耍。没什么(大型)车辆禁行区甚至象样一点的大型街区,它只拥有非常小的街区;以规划的说法就是:“被多余的街道拙劣地分割开”。它的建筑也陈旧不堪。North End本身联想得到的每一件事大概都是错误的。以规划的科班术语来说,它是一本关于“特大城市(理论)”在过去衰落阶段的立体教科书。North End也因而被反复作为麻省理工学院和哈佛规划建筑专业学生的作业,在老师的指导下,学生们坚持不懈地在纸上把它变得拥有车辆禁行区和公园散步场所,去除其不适宜的用途,把它转变成一个秩序井然和优雅高尚的理想典范,做起来好象简单得微不足道。 (2002.2.20 leonx 译)

(23)When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by throwing two older apartments together, and had equipped these with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a narrow alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North End, but no: more neatly repointed brickwork, new blinds, and a burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city district I had ever seen—or have seen to this day—in which the sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and amputated, but repaired and painted neatly as if they were intended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for living were an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such enterprises as upholstery making, metal working, carpentry, food processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people shopping, people strolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold January day, there would surely have been people sitting.

(23)当我于1959年再见NORTH END时, 惊讶于她的变化。 成打成打的建筑恢复原貌。由外往里看,原本靠窗摆放的床垫被威尼斯风格的窗帘所替代,透过窗帘,可以瞥见墙上清新的油漆。那些原来挤塞着三四个家庭改修过的狭窄的房屋里现在只有一户或两户人家。当我进去拜访时,我才发现一些租住在里面的家庭将两套老公寓连通,使房子更为宽敞,并且还配备了浴室,厨房等等设施。我仔细查看了一条窄窄的过道,希望最起码能在那儿找到肮脏陈旧NORTH END的痕迹。但是,所能发现的是比以前砌得更整洁的砖,崭新的窗帘和开门时传来的乐音。事实上,这是我以前见过的或者说是迄今为止见到的唯一一个街区,在其中,停车场和住宅建筑物之间的空地没有被废弃或是隔断,而是被修葺粉刷一新仿佛有意要人看见。与住宅区想融合的是多的难以置信的精致的食品店和诸如室内装潢,五金店,木具加工,食品加工等商业。街道上由于戏耍的孩子,购物和散步的人们而变得生气盎然。假如现在不是寒冷的一月,那么肯定会有人小坐于此。(2002.2.21 qq00612 译)

(24)The general street atmosphere of buoyancy, friendliness and good health was so infectious that I began asking directions of people just for the fun of getting in on some talk. I had seen a lot of Boston in the past couple of days, most of it sorely distressing, and this struck me, with relief, as the healthiest place in the city. But I could not imagine where the money had come from for the rehabilitation, because it is almost impossible today to get any appreciable mortgage money in districts of American cities that are not either high-rent, or else imitations of suburbs. To find out, I went into a bar and restaurant (where an animated conversation about fishing was in progress) and called a Boston planner I know. (25)“Why in the world are you down in the North End?” he said. “Money? Why, no money or work has gone into the North End. Nothing’s going on down there. Eventually, yes, but not yet. That’s a slum!”

(26)“It doesn’t seem like a slum in the city. It has two hundred and seventy-five dwelling units to the net acre! I hate to admit we have anything like that in Boston, but it’s a fact.” (27)“Do you have any other figures on it?” I asked. (28)“Yes, funny thing. It has among the lowest delinquency, disease and infant mortality rates in the city. It also has the lowest ratio of rent to income in the city. Boy, are those people getting bargains. Let’s see . . . the child population is just about average for the city, on the nose. The death rate is low, 8.8 per thousand, against the average city rate of 11.2.The TB death rate is very low, less than 1 per ten thousand, can’t understand it, it’ slower even than Brookline’s. In the old days the North End used to be the city’s worst spot for tuberculosis, but all that has changed. Well they must be strong people. Of course it’s a terrible slum.” (24)大街上轻快,友好,健康的气氛是如此具有传染力,以致我开始以问路的方式插入人们的闲聊,享受这份乐趣。在过去的几天里我见了波士顿不少地方,绝大多数非常让人失望,但NORTH END 作为城市中最健康的地方让我震惊,也令我慰藉。但我不能想象这笔重建资金从何而来。因为现如今在美国,除了高租金区和仿郊区的项目,其他的几乎不可能获得抵押贷款。为找到答案,我去了间酒吧,也可称饭店。那儿,一场关于钓鱼的谈话正如火如荼地进行着。我给一位认识的波士顿规划师挂了电话。(2002.2.22 qq00612 译) (25)“你究竟到NORTH END 来做什么?”,他说: “钱? 为什么? 没什么钱或是工作投入到NORTH END. 那儿什么都没发生.是的,将来会有的,但现在还没有. 那是个贫民窟!” (26)“她看上去并不象贫民窟。她每英亩地有275个单元!我不愿承认我们在波士顿有这样的地方,但这是事实。” (27)“你有关于她的其他数据吗?”我问他。 (28)“有,很有趣。她的犯罪率,疾病率,婴儿死亡率是全城最低的。她的租金与收入比也是最低。嘿,哪儿的人们真可算是拣到便宜货了。我们来看看。。。人口中,孩子所占的比例与全市平均值持平,刚刚到。死亡率为千分之8.8,与全市平均死亡率千分之11。2比起来,很低。 TB死亡率也低,不到千分之一,不可思议,甚至比BROOKLINE还慢。以前NORTH END是全市最严重的肺结核病高发点,但所有这一切都改变了。住在那儿的人们身体肯定很强壮。当然她仍然是个可怕的贫民区”。

(29)“You should have more slums like this,” I said.“ Don’t tell me there are plans to wipe this out. You ought to be down here learning as much as you can from it.” (30)“I know how you feel,” he said.“ I often go down there myself just to walk around the streets and feel that wonderful, cheerful street life. Say, what you ought to do, you ought to come back and go down in the summer if you think it’s fun now. You ‘d be crazy about it in summer. But of course we have to rebuild it eventually. We’ve got to get those people off the streets.” (2002.2.18) (31)Here was a curious thing .My friend’s instincts told him the North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and food for city neighborhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him the North End had to be a bad place. (32)The leading Boston savings banker, “a man ’way up there in the power structure ,” to whom my friend referred me for my inquiry about the money, confirmed what I learned, in the meantime, from people in the North End . The money had not come now knows enough about planning to know a slum as well as the planners do. “No sense in lending money into the North End,” the banker said. “It’s a slum! It’s still getting some immigrants! Furthermore, back in the Depression it had a very large number of foreclosures; bad record.” (I had heard about this too, in the meantime, and how families had worked and pooled their resources to buy back some of those foreclosed buildings.)

(29)“你们应该有更多像这样的贫民区”,我说,”别告诉我你们正计划清除她.你应该亲自下来看看, 从中你会发现许多东西.”

(30) “我知你感受”,他说, “我经常一个人去那而走走感受那美好快乐的街道生活. 看,你该做的是夏天时回来再去那儿,假如你现在觉得很有趣. 到那时你会为她疯狂. 但是最终我们仍然不得不重建她. 我们已将居民与一些街道隔离.” (2002.2.25 qq00612 译)

(31)这是件古怪的事。我朋友的直觉告诉他NORTH END是个好地方,且他手上的关于社会方面的数据也证明了这点。但是作为一名循规蹈矩的城市规划者,他所学的关于什么有利于人民,有利于城市周边地区发展的知识和那些使他成为专家的的学识告诉他NORTH END 不得不是个糟糕的地方。(2002.2.27 qq00612 译) (32)关于资金来源问题,那位朋友让我向波士顿最首要的管理存款业务的银行家咨询,他也是权力机构中举足轻重的人物。这位银行家证明了我从NORTH END里获悉的情况,资金并不是从银行系统中而来。现在的银行和规划师一样懂得足够的规划知识,知道什么是贫民区。“将钱投入到NORTH END完全没有意义。”银行家说道:她是个贫民窟!而且至今仍有人迁徙进来。更糟糕的是,在经济大萧条期间,那地区大量住户被银行取消赎回房屋权,纪录不良.”(我曾经听说过这消息,并且在那儿参观时还听说了人们是如何工作以买回一部分被银行禁止赎取的楼盘。) 。(2002.2.28 qq00612 译)

(33)The largest mortgage loans that had been fed into this district of some 15,000 people in the quarter-century since the Great Depression were for $3,000, the banker told me, “and very, very few of those.” The rehabilitation work had been almost entirely financed by business and housing earnings within the district, plowed back in, and by skilled work bartered among residents and relatives of residents.

(34)By this time I knew that this inability to borrow for improvement was a galling worry to North Enders, and that furthermore some North Enders were worried because it seemed impossible to get new building in the area except at the price of seeing themselves and their community wiped out in the fashion of the students’ dreams of a city Eden, a fate which they knew was not academic because it had already smashed completely a socially similar—although physically more spacious—nearby district called the West End. They were worried because they were aware also that patch and fix with nothing else could not do forever. “Any chance of loans for new construction in the. North End?” I asked the banker. (35)“No, absolutely not!” he said, sounding impatient at my denseness. “That’s a slum!”

(33)“经济大萧条后的25年内,在这个拥有15000人的地区,最大金额的抵押贷款只有3000元,”银行家告诉我, “且贷款数量相当相当少.” 重建项目的资金决大多数来自区域内的商业和住房供给项目的赢利及再投资所获的利,还有当地居民,居民亲戚间的技术劳动的交换. 。(2002.3.1 qq00612 译)

(34)至此,我终于明白无能贷款进行社区改建对于北角居民而言的确是一大烦恼,且在未来也不可能修建新建筑,除非以按照学生间流行的伊甸园梦之城将他们的家园完完全全取而代之为代价。北角居民为这样的命运担忧,他们已看到所谓伊甸园之城并不是基于学术上,因为它已彻底瓦解了位于北角附近,与北角社会结构相似——虽然空间上要小于北角,名为西角的街区。北角居民为他们的前景担忧,他们已意识到仅仅修修补补之类的改建不会一直持续下去。“有可能为北角新建项目贷到款吗?”我问那位银行家。

(35)“不,绝对不可能!”他说,对于我的重复追问似乎以不耐烦,“那里是贫民区!” 。(2002.4.17 qq00612 译)

(36)Bankers, like planners, have theories about cities on which they act. They have gotten their theories from the same intellectual sources as the planners. Bankers and government administrative officials who guarantee mortgages do not invent planning theories nor, surprisingly, even economic doctrine about cities. They are enlightened nowadays, and they pick up their ideas from idealists, major new ideas for considerably more than a generation, theoretical planners, financers and bureaucrats are all just about even today.

(37)And to put it bluntly, they are all in the same stage of elaborately learned superstition as medical science was early in the last century, when physicians put their faith in bloodletting , to draw out the evil humors which were believed to cause disease. With bloodletting, it took years of learning to know precisely which veins, by what rituals, were to be opened for what symptoms. A superstructure of technical complication was erected in such deadpan detail that the literature still sounds almost plausible. However, because people, even when they are thoroughly enmeshed in descriptions of reality which are at variance with reality, are still seldom devoid of the powers of observation and independent thought, the science of bloodletting, over most of its long sway, appears usually to have been tempered with a certain amount of common sense. Or it was tempered until it reached its highest peaks of technique in, of all places, the young United States. Bloodletting went wild here.

(36) 银行家同规划师一样,对于他们运作的城市有着同样的认知,如同规划师般从丰富的资源里获悉原理。令人惊奇的是,银行家与为贷款抵押担保的政府行政官员既不是规划理论的创建者,也不是城市经济学说的著述者。然而现在他们被启蒙了,从较其晚一辈的理想主义者那儿拾取理论。由于纯理论性的城市规划学说并不具备大量跨年代的新观点,规划师,金融家和官僚家现如今也只是蠢蠢欲动罢了。(2002.4.21 qq00612 译)

(37)坦白而言, 它们全部都在诸如上世纪早期的医学那样处于过度痴迷于迷信的阶段之中, 当时,医生们相信放血能够释放出人体内的致病病魔. 由于放血这个错误的治疗手段, 医生们用了多年才准确地知道, 对于什么样的症状,用什么方式,适宜切开什么人体管道. 但是一个技术上的障碍在宏观结构上已经被建立起来, 并且有着直观的细节,所以即使如此糟糕的放血治疗仍然听起来是可行的. 因为人们即使耳濡目染在纷繁复杂的对现实的描述中, 这些描述是与现实有出入的,人们还是会保有观察与独立思考的能力, 然而,放血的伪科学在它长年的轨迹中, 似乎显得与常识有一些背道而驰. 或是说,它在达到自身技术的最高峰时,与常识背道而驰. 这时候,每一个地方,尤其是美国,放血治疗疯狂地被实践着.

It had an enormously influential proponent in Dr. Benjamin Rush, still revered as the greatest statesman-physician of our revolutionary and federal periods, and a genius of medical administration. Dr. Rush Got Things Done. Among the things he got done, some of them good and useful, were to develop, practice, teach and spread the custom of bloodletting in cases where prudence or mercy had heretofore restrained its use. He and his students drained the blood of very young children, of consumptives, of the greatly aged, of almost anyone unfortunate enough to be sick in his realms of influence. His extreme practices aroused the alarm and horror of European bloodletting physicians. And yet as late as 1851, a committee appointed by the State Legislature of New York solemnly defended the thoroughgoing use of bloodletting. It scathingly ridiculed and censured a physician, William Turner, who had the temerity to write a pamphlet criticizing Dr. Rush’s doctrines and calling “the practice of taking blood in diseases contrary to common sense, to general experience, to enlightened reason and to the manifest laws of the divine Providence.” Sick people needed fortifying, not draining, said Dr. Turner, and he was squelched

Benjamin Rush 医生有着极为有影响力的支持呼声, 在我们革命与联邦时期,他仍然被视为最伟大的政治家与医生,并且是一个天才般的医务管理人才. “Rush医生能做到”. 在他所做的事当中,有一些是好的,有用的, 有一些则是在细心和仁慈阻碍了放血治疗的传统时,去发展,实践,教育和拓展它. 他和他的学生们对幼儿,对老人,对几乎所有在他的势力范围内不幸害病的人们放血. 他的极端行为激起了欧洲放血医师的警觉和恐慌. 但是,直到现在1851年,一个由纽约州政府任命的委员会仍然严正地为放血的全面应用辩护. William Turner觉得被这个事实严重地戏弄与侮辱了,他便勇敢地写了一个小册子Rush;批评Rush医生的教条和声称”放血的实践有违常识,通常经验,开放的理由与神圣的法律. (2002.7.20 Divercity 译)

(38)Medical analogies, applied to social organisms, are apt to be farfetched, and there is no point in mistaking mammalian chemistry for what occurs in a city. But analogies as to what goes on in the brains of earnest and learned men, dealing with complex phenomena they do not understand at all and trying to make do with a pseudoscience, do have point. At in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. The tools of technique have steadily been perfected. Naturally, in time, forceful and able men, admired administrators, having swallowed the initial fallacies and having been provisioned with tools and with public confid