The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
theatlantic.com
The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#2I apologise that I only got 1/2 way through this article. It said very little to me.
The article spent a bit of time talking about decline of empires. I watched a few documentaries on the topic yesterday. A central theme that recurred was environment and conflict with other regions. This was the point where I decided that this article wasn't for me. I'm no historian, but, the analogy lost me. This and the lack of details about her theory.
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#3I apologise that I only got 1/2 way through this article. It said very little to me. The article spent a bit of time talking about decline of empires. I watched a few documentaries on the topic yesterday. A central theme that recurred was environment and conflict with other regions. This was the point where I decided that this article wasn't for me. I'm no historian, but, the analogy lost me. This and the lack of det…
Ditto. Despite the title of the article, this was more about the particulars of her life than any of her specific ideas. I was a little disappointed.
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#4I apologise that I only got 1/2 way through this article. It said very little to me. The article spent a bit of time talking about decline of empires. I watched a few documentaries on the topic yesterday. A central theme that recurred was environment and conflict with other regions. This was the point where I decided that this article wasn't for me. I'm no historian, but, the analogy lost me. This and the lack of det…
It ends with a reference to Marx.
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#5I read Life and Death when I was 20. I was a CS student working late at night and the only other students working that late were the architecture students. Getting coffee one told me that Life and Death was their book.
So I read it. Getting a good recommendation for a book out of your subject area is gold. Jacobs is very readable.
One idea of hers that has always stuck with me was Gradual Money vs Cataclysmic Money. She also railed against the pointless new.
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#6I apologise that I only got 1/2 way through this article. It said very little to me. The article spent a bit of time talking about decline of empires. I watched a few documentaries on the topic yesterday. A central theme that recurred was environment and conflict with other regions. This was the point where I decided that this article wasn't for me. I'm no historian, but, the analogy lost me. This and the lack of det…
It ends with a reference to Marx.
Doesn't everything? In a way?
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#7I read Jane Jacobs as part of a research writing class in college, focused on American cultural health. Essentially, the class was structured as the professor asserting Jocabs' work as the core thesis of the class, with our main paper for the term to either concur or dissent with it. (And hence, the class had two components -- reading Jacobs' work and a few select others the professor picked, dissecting the arguments and sources used, and then building a list of related materials, finding them (eg, at the main state school archive), reading those chosen materials, and writing a paper based on them either concurring with or dissenting from the main body of work.
I won't claim to agree with her 100%, but like many people I disagree with, articulating what we agree on, what we disagree on, and why is very informative about my own views on a topic.
So, at 18, it was very formative to interact with several of her books about city structure, how culture both emerges from and influences that structure, and related works and topics.
Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#8Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#9Re: The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs
#10I discovered Jane's work very recently through the "The Economy of Cities" (I haven't read her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" yet but I've read others) and it's been a real eye opener for me. It's was very enlightening to discover a theory on how important cities are to growth and well-being.
Some of her concepts such as "import replacement" (a free market process of discovery and division of labor within a city) can be very helpful for cities aiming to mimick San Francisco / Silicon Valley such as Lille in France (with its Euratechnologies neighbourhood, where I work) or Shenzen (now that it's losing its toy factories and moving up the economic laders). And the importance of "eyes on the street" for everybody's safety, of diversity of shops/works for economic resilience, of serendipity for the process of innovation (the creation of new work, in Jane Jacobs terms), etc.
And by the way, her books are an easy read too ! I'd say a real "classic" : even more 40 years later there's still some real insights for non-urbanists.