The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs

I read this recently, which I found to be a more interesting take on Jacobs. In particular, on how easily linked article wants to blame trump on rural and commuter neighborhoods as uniquely isolated and un-diverse.

I agree with the take from the New Yorker article that cities don't organically solve this problem even if mass development is kept out -- the history of urban life in the US over the past ten years seems to be a reduction in diversity, especially in areas without a lot of recent development, due to skyrocketing rents and trendy-but-not-diverse incoming populations.

I see more real diversity - people of different backgrounds interacting and doing the same things - in a lot of suburbs these days than in more urban cores, where's it's largely reducing to a relatively homogenous set of affluent residents and the more-diverse-but-non-resident-and-distinct set of Uber drivers, restaurant staff, store employees, etc.

Or, to quote:

> She believed in that virtuous, reoxygenating circle whereby density—and short blocks and small green spaces—guaranteed diversity. This no longer seems so, at least not in Manhattan. In the past fifteen years, the density of my Upper East Side block has remained constant, and the play of old and new buildings, parks and streets is unchanged. (No one can build without several years of planning hearings.) But we have lost two toy stores, a magazine store, a cigar store, and a stationery-and-card store, and gained two banks, a real-estate office, a giant Duane Reade drugstore, and, to the bafflement of the neighborhood, three French baby-clothes stores. (The best theory is that these are part of the settlement in hedge-fund divorces.)