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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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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]]''. | 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''. | ||
This is the great, huge irony of our modernist diversity agenda: it’s so ''homogenous'' — so ''[[legible]]''. We all wear the same badges, signal the same virtues, declare ourselves each others allies as if we are Stepford wives. That is not what Jacobs is talking about at all. She is talking about a variety, a serendipitous, redundant, overlapping, scattershot fripperousness that generates all kinds of unexpected opportunities and challenges. ''This'' is the richness of city. | This is the great, huge irony of our modernist diversity agenda: it’s so ''homogenous'' — so ''[[legible]]''. We all wear the same badges, signal the same virtues, declare ourselves each others allies as if we are Stepford wives. That is not what Jacobs is talking about at all. She is talking about a variety, a serendipitous, redundant, overlapping, scattershot fripperousness that generates all kinds of unexpected opportunities and challenges. ''This'' is the richness of city. | ||