Jane Jacobs: The Champion of Little Plans
the-american-interest.com
the-american-interest.com
After that part, it's about applying her principles to today's issues beyond cities to entrepreneurship versus large corporations and red tape and how to serve people and their lives.
The article didn't apply her principles to the environment, where I find a relevant parallel: people in traffic jams felt, "if only this road had another lane, then I wouldn't have to endure this traffic jam" so we built more lanes and roads. After generations, people learned that empty roads helped only temporarily, eventually leading people to use them and create more traffic than before the expansion.
The parallel is that people see pollution today and think, "if only a new technology reduced this pollution, I wouldn't have to breathe this polluted air / endure sea levels rising / etc" so we develop new technologies. We haven't yet learned the parallel with roads that more technologies help only temporarily, eventually leading people to use them and create more pollution.
I've overstated things to simplify, but there are shades of gray. We need some roads, but more isn't necessarily better and short-term solutions often worsen the situation. Same with technology, as Jevon's paradox, among other effects, illustrates.
In complex systems, if you don't address the leverage point of the beliefs and goals of the system, changing elements in it rarely changes the system, no matter how wonderful the new technology seems, be it LED lighting, nuclear power, carbon sequestration, space travel, and so on. In a system based on beliefs that we can expand out of any problem, they'll make the system expand faster. In a system designed to serve people, new technologies would help serve people better, but we don't live in such a system yet.
We could use an environmental Jane Jacobs.
This is a false equivalency. Traffic is very much the limiting factor in the use of roads. Pollution is absolutely not the limiting factor in the use of technology. The volume of pollution produced does not expand to some magical limit in response to changes in process in the same way that traffic expands to fill roadways in response to road expansion.
Yep, and this is a false equivalency too. Traffic does not "expand to fill roadways" in that way, we are just so under-provisioned on transit infrastructure that it gives the artificial appearance of this. By this flawed logic, we should never build Hospitals (because it would 'make more' sick people, they would 'expand to fill hospitals'). Or we should never build schools (because that would 'make more' uneducated people).
This isn't new, grossly misunderstanding induced demand is par for the course in that field. But it's worth mentioning every time this comes up.
In the light of the gigantic failure of 20th century early modernist architect's to solve many social problems, despite their loud claims to the contrary. What did early modernist architects give us? Brutalism, car-friendly and pedestrian-repelling architecture following the blueprint of Le Corbusier "Radiant City" [1] and the Athens Charter [2]. Some solution to social problems ...
In the light of the extreme failure of most of 20th century's modernist architecture, the burden of proof is firmly in the architects & urban planner's court.
Today I think you see a certain cherry-picking of Jacobs' beliefs going on. A lot of people latch onto her opposition to running a highway through Washington Square Park because they don't like car-centric culture.
That's all well and good. But, as you suggest, she also tended to be against other types of large-scale urban planning. She probably would have been skeptical of the school of thought that the SF housing situation would be so much better if they'd just bulldoze the Mission and build residential towers.