How Jane Jacobs saved New York City's soul
theamericanconservative.com
theamericanconservative.com
What I actually find fascinating in all this is the NIMBY attitude which is supposed to have come from this movement.
At one level, we all hate NIMBY attitudes, but at the other level, we all embrace it when it means a change in our living standards imposed by others. This inherent hypocrisy on all our parts makes it hard to have a valid conversation on the topic.
But I think the point about preserving cities as they are is well made. I mean, in all but a very few cases, if people are living in an area, that should be sufficient evidence that the current model is on the right track. As long as people are free to move - by this are not allocated their living space by a higher authority - then at some level those people have accepted whatever tradeoffs were involved.
The problem with this is that a discussion of crime intersects discussions of housing, and it gets messy. Ultimately you can't unpick design completely from other social trends/problems, as it is all woven together. Good urban design should blend together flexible use with a minimum aesthetic, and leave the rest to the people who want to live there.
However, the inarguable result is that centrally planned land use is a disaster, and the near-misses of the 40's, 50's and 60's will stand as a testament for the dangers of central planning in all respects.
The best example of this is a visit to Prague, where a haphazard but charming inner city survived the planners, but the ugly and brutal outer suburbs are a charmless collection of concrete structures flowing from a planning pen.