82,891
edits
The Death and Life of Great American Cities: Difference between revisions
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (view source)
Revision as of 14:59, 2 January 2024
, 2 Januaryno edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
There is so much that is breathtaking about this book. That its author, {{author|Jane Jacobs}}, had neither tertiary education nor experience in urban planning; that she published it ''sixty years ago'' yet its prescriptions depict uncannily the [[high-modernist]] attitudes that persist today; that Jacobs’ prescription, while superficially counterintuitive, is so visionary, pluralistic and ''brilliant''. Anyone interested in how distributed networks should best be organised —or should be allowed to organise ''themselves'' — should read this, imaginative magnificent book. | There is so much that is breathtaking about this book. That its author, {{author|Jane Jacobs}}, had neither tertiary education nor experience in urban planning; that she published it ''sixty years ago'' yet its prescriptions depict uncannily the [[high-modernist]] attitudes that persist today; that Jacobs’ prescription, while superficially counterintuitive, is so visionary, pluralistic and ''brilliant''. Anyone interested in how distributed networks should best be organised —or should be allowed to organise ''themselves'' — should read this, imaginative magnificent book. | ||
It resonates with some other minor classics in adjacent fields over the last sixty years which caution against the folly of the [[reductionist]], disposition which sees top-down control as the only way of harnessing the networks and mitigating the caprice of unreliable, inconstant individuals. Of course that | It resonates with some other minor classics in adjacent fields over the last sixty years which caution against the folly of the [[reductionist]], disposition which sees top-down control as the only way of harnessing the networks and mitigating the caprice of unreliable, inconstant individuals. Of course, that very unreliability and caprice is a feature and not a bug. Contributors to this of this contrary position are impressive: {{author|Adam Smith}} and {{author|Charles Darwin}} hashed out the basic template, and then a series of brilliant works in the middle of last century, of which Jane Jacobs’ was one of the first, gave these remote principles vivid articulation in specific fields. Jacobs’ was urban planning — wait: bear with me — and she targeted her ire at the likes of Le Corbusier and Robert Moses, father of what might have seen as still a good idea at the time, the ''housing project''. | ||
In doing so Jacobs articulates — or at any rate spookily anticipates — later developments in thinking on [[complexity]], [[systems theory]] and [[antifragile|(anti)fragility]]. So read ''Great American Cities'' with {{br|Seeing Like a State}}, {{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} and {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}’ {{br|Thinking in Systems}} and {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}’s {{br|Antifragile}} and you will have the bones of a grand unifying theory of everything. | In doing so Jacobs articulates — or at any rate spookily anticipates — later developments in thinking on [[complexity]], [[systems theory]] and [[antifragile|(anti)fragility]]. So read ''Great American Cities'' with {{br|Seeing Like a State}}, {{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} and {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}’ {{br|Thinking in Systems}} and {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}’s {{br|Antifragile}} and you will have the bones of a grand unifying theory of everything. | ||