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 }}{{br|The Death and Life of Great American Cities}}<br>{{author|Jane Jacobs}}
 ===Systems thinking 1960s style===
-There is so much that is breathtaking about this book. That its author had neither tertiary education nor any experience in urban planning; that is was published in sixty years ago yet seems to depict uncannily the [[high-modernist]] attitudes that {{author|James C. Scott}} skewered forty years later in {{br|Seeing Like a State}}, but which seem to persist today; that its prescription, in is so counterintuitive, visionary, clear and ''brilliant'', and that it is so liberal — ''really'' liberal as opposed to [[libtard]] liberal — pluralistic and imaginative.
+There is so much that is breathtaking about this book. That its author had neither tertiary education nor any experience in urban planning; that is was published in sixty years ago yet seems to depict uncannily the [[high-modernist]] attitudes that {{author|James C. Scott}} skewered forty years later in {{br|Seeing Like a State}}, but which seem to persist today; that its prescription, in is so counterintuitive, visionary, clear and ''brilliant'', and that it is so pluralistic, imaginative and ''liberal'' — ''really'' liberal as opposed to [[libtard]] “liberal”.
-It resonates with a series of other great books in adjacent fields over the last sixty years all of whom caution against executive, top-down direction networks of autonomous individuals who are better placed, motivated and incentivised to make executive decisions for themselves. Jacobs was there first, and she if she didn’t articulate [[complexity theory]], [[systems theory]] then she anticipated it with spooky, eerie accuracy. 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.
+It resonates with some other minor classics in adjacent fields over the last sixty years which caution against the folly of modernist, [[reductionist]], disposition which sees top-down control of as the only way of harnessing networks of otherwise unreliable individuals.
-Half a century before it became the fashionable pose it is today, [[diversity]], and the richness and variety of everyday life, are the heartbeat of Jacobs’s observations. ''Real'' and not just cosmetic diversity, of income, occupation, outlook, stage in life. Jacobs observes that diversity and efficiency are, at some level, ''mutually exclusive''. 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. 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 serendiptious, redundant, overlapping, scattershot fripperousness that generates all kinds of unexpected opportunities and challenges. ''This'' is the richness of city.
+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.
+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.
+Before you take me for some unreconstituted dinosaur, let me explain: the prevailing doctrine 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''.
+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: