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The Death and Life of Great American Cities: Difference between revisions
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (view source)
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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 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 — [[complexity theory]], [[systems theory]] . So read ''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 you will have the bones of a grand unifying theory of everything. | 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 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 — [[complexity theory]], [[systems theory]] . So read ''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 you will have the bones of a grand unifying theory of everything. | ||
Central to her argument is the inestimable, practical value of ''[[diversity]] — not just the cosmetic [[virtue-signalling]] it has become today, but what it actually is, an essential foundational quality of any live community. The richness and variety of everyday life — the durability and vitality afforded by a great mix of different people of different ages, different backgrounds, different perspectives, different ways and means — this is the heartbeat of Jacobs’s observations. This collective — as long as it really is diverse — can adapt to anything. The city is an ecosystem. | Central to her argument is the inestimable, practical value of ''[[diversity]]'' — not just the cosmetic [[virtue-signalling]] it has become today, but what it actually is, an essential foundational quality of any live community. The richness and variety of everyday life — the durability and vitality afforded by a great mix of different people of different ages, different backgrounds, different perspectives, different ways and means — this is the heartbeat of Jacobs’s observations. This collective — as long as it really is diverse — can adapt to anything. The city is an ecosystem. | ||
Before you take me for some unreconstituted dinosaur, let me explain: the prevailing | Before you take me for some unreconstituted dinosaur — which, to be sure, I may well be, but not on this account — let me explain: the prevailing dogma of business today, above all else, is ''scale''. [[Scale]] afforded by technology, data-processing power, and the amplifying effect of the [[distributed network]]. Scale emphasises efficiency and speed and the elimination or waste and redundancy: tightening margins, aggregating categories, standardising, commoditising, offshoring, compartmentalising, just-in-time producing, straight-through processing. These are exactly the dispositions advance by Le Corbusier, Robert Moses, and the High-Modernists of the new deal. Jacobs makes it stark: at the extremes to which these values inevitably tend, they ae ''utterly inimical to real [[diversity]]''. | ||
Jacobs observes that diversity and efficiency are, at some level, ''mutually exclusive''. You can’t move with infinite economy ''and'' have a multiplicity of viewpoints. You can’t have everyone housed in homogenous boxes ''and'' cater for every shape and size. You do one or the other. That is a wallopingly profound idea. And so obvious, that it beggars belief no-one is harping on about it today. You ''can’t'' homogenise, economise, compartmentalise, rationalise, standardise ''and'' embrace caprice, idiosyncrasy and divergence. The [[high-modernist]] that claims commitment to [[diversity]] — and they all seem to be ''is lying''. | Jacobs observes that diversity and efficiency are, at some level, ''mutually exclusive''. You can’t move with infinite economy ''and'' have a multiplicity of viewpoints. You can’t have everyone housed in homogenous boxes ''and'' cater for every shape and size. You do one or the other. That is a wallopingly profound idea. And so obvious, that it beggars belief no-one is harping on about it today. You ''can’t'' homogenise, economise, compartmentalise, rationalise, standardise ''and'' embrace caprice, idiosyncrasy and divergence. The [[high-modernist]] that claims commitment to [[diversity]] — and they all seem to be ''is lying''. | ||