The Death and Life of Great American Cities: Difference between revisions

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 The contrary, “bottom-up” thesis is simple: those on the ground generally understand their own predicament better, are better placed, motivated and incentivised to make appropriate decisions to improve it for themselves, and the self-direction that [[Emergence|emerges]] from the aggregation of their micro-decisions can hardly ''fail'' to be more effective than the imagined by a public-spirited homunculus sitting in a corner office pulling levers.
+So, of the thundering, plainly right, observations Jacobs makes are these:
+*Streets, and not the buildings, and critically, not parks, that are the veins and arteries of the city. Where they are clearly demarcated from private space, regularly occupied, or mixed use, and where activity is there for all to see and as such there are eyes on the street belonging not to the authorities but to the “natural proprietors of the streets”, the conditions are right for a safe, dynamic and prosperous neighbourhood. It is where these conditions are not met —long blocks, deserted sidewalks, little diversity and especially and where buildings face ''away'' from the streets — as they tend to in the projects — that the security and vibrancy is lost.
+*A mixture of uses, residential and commercial, educational and recreational, together, ''adds'' cohesion, and ''reinforces'' positive feedback loops. This steadfastly flies in the face of modernist orthodoxy.  Businesses open by day, bars by night, ensure that the street are constantly over-watched by those natural proprietors. School children should interact with shopkeepers and publicans. They will, soon enough!
+*You need old buildings as much as you need ones: not just fancy old ones, but also humdrum, run down, or even dilapidated old ones. For some members of the community, they will be all they can afford. If you have mechanisms to allow these people into the community in places they can with their limited means sustain, they have the opportunity for development. If the whole place has gentrified, there will people who can’t afford to live there.
+*The modernist disposition to organise, make efficient and eradicate redundancy and disorganisation in the organic community necessarily prioritises homogeneity and, at the limit, monopoly, and these accentuate ''fragility''.
+I like the idea that the city is largely comprised of people when and where you can see them, and not when they’re behind closed doors in their houses and, as far as the city dynamic is concerned, out of circulation. I can’t help analogising this to corporations and wondering whether our carefully demarcated, siloed, ring-fenced and security controlled areas, where specialists and different functions are penned together in separate projects, that these opportunities are lost. And what does Jacobs’ observation we seek out humanity — that the sight of people attracts more people in another positive feedback loop — tell us about the commercial world’s obsession with secrecy, confidentiality, and proprietary information?
 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.
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 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.
-So, of the thundering, plainly right, observations Jacobs makes are these:
-*The streets, and not the buildings, are the vital part of the city, which is largely comprised of people when you can see them. When they’re in their houses, from the city dynamic they’re largely out of circulation;
-*You need old buildings as much as you need ones: not just fancy old ones, but also humdrum, run down, or even dilapidated old ones. If the whole place has gentrified, there will people who can’t afford to live there.
 If, like me, you prefer your books on the go, buy with confidence, by the way: Penguin’s 50th anniversary audiobook is beautifully narrated by Donna Rawlins.