Posted on 01/30/2017 3:13:27 AM PST by Oz8509338511
Who is Jane Jacobs?
Is Donald Trump the "Jane Jacobs" of another shift in the dawning a new era and/or world thinking?
Economic? Political? Etc.
I read her book years ago. I think she was wrong in her own aims but she was astute in showing how Urban Renewal managed to do mostly the wrong things to attain the ends desired and that city planners did not understand how things work in the first place. I think she was trying to infuse market methods into a bureaucratic establishment. She had some good ideas but convincing politicians and bureaucrats of them was not possible.
I don’t think she was any agent of change but she proved that there is a valid woman’s viewpoint on such things as city planning and that a woman’s view could see ways to do things efficiently that the bureaucrats couldn’t or wouldn’t see.
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Jane Jacobs was loved by my Sociology prof and inspired my. Jane Jacobs framed the agenda for the many Alinksy grassroots organizations in Chicago in the ‘60s.
Non-Alinsky Florence Scala first ran with the Jane Jacobs ideas in fighting the Italian Mafia profiting from the urban renewal of her neighborhood to make way for UICC. Scala lost but claimed she had a Moral Victory.
Alinskyites ridiculed the Scala satisfaction with a moral victory, claimed they could produce real victories, and they delivered. In ‘61 Urban Renewal had already started with Noble Square in the community I would move into.
The politicians (Rostenkowski) and their mafia developers (McHugh, Levin) clearly had plans to gentrify the corridor between the loop and airport.
NCO-Northwest Community Organization explicitly formed to use Alinsky methods and Jane Jacobs framework to fight Urban Renewal. It succeeded in stopping any further Urban Renewal. Like all Alinsky groups NCO fell apart as it matured. It was replaced by the anti-Alinsky Luis Gutierrez types who benefitted from gentrifying the community with white lefties from the suburbs.
Jane Jacobs had a long and useful career. She was right early about some things, and wrong about others, but she showed a consistent capacity to change her mind based on experience. IOW, she was a honest thinker and writer, though sometimes wrong. She will be most remembered as an early advocate of livable, mixed use neighborhoods in big cities. In this context, she rose to early prominence as an opponent of the top-down, urban renewal planners who liked to destroy organic neighborhoods and replace them with artificial projects reflecting the current wisdom of bureaucratic elites. She also consistently opposed the idea that freeways should trump neighborhoods; she recognized the destructive impact of poorly planned roads back when the asphalt lobby was far less challenged than it is today. It was a radical thought then, and is still contested today: she believed that cities should work first and foremost for those who actually live there, as opposed to commuters. As a resident of a now-gentrified and highly desirable neighborhood that, over the years, faced repeated threats of destruction at the hands of the freeway people, I’ve always appreciated her voice.
"Urban renewal" in the mid-20th century gave us Cabrini-Green and similar catastrophes around the country, as well as ill-planned expressways that systematically blighted the neighborhoods they disrupted. The planners' record in American cities was awful in that period. It's fair to say that we've learned some hard lessons, and that planning today is far more sensitive to neighborhood livability issues. Jane Jacobs was one of the leaders of that reaction. Many of the iconic success stories of contemporary urban renewal are based on slowly undoing the mistakes of the 1950's-70's. The politics of this are interesting. When the subject arises, I habitually refer to "LBJ and the Great Society's plan to destroy America's cities," and I find even my liberal friends nodding in agreement.
Critical thinking sociology is an oxymoron in today’s politically correct Pre-Trump world ? Agreed?
Housing projects like Cabrini-Green are an excellent example of how liberals fail to comprehend human nature. Cabrini-Green took dysfunctional families out of normal neighborhoods and concentrated them in huge housing projects.
Before the projects, kids in dysfunctional families lived in neighborhoods where there were normal families to serve as role models. The housing projects ensured that those kids saw only dysfunction. The results were immediate and tragic.
Sometimes the one asking the questions is more the “Change agent” than those who change their behavior as a result of being ASKED the question. Agreeed?
Historical example: Jesus Christ to Peter: Who do you say that I AM?
Interesting comparison. I've been thinking that the historic character most resembling Trump may be Theodore Roosevelt ... both brash New Yorkers
- sons of wealthy families
- ran as Republicans but had some "progressive" ideas
- were proponents of the Big Stick policy
- rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and were considered bullies.
The common conception of TR today is that he was cute and cuddly - like the eponymous teddy bear (which might have been a brilliant pr stunt). But when he was coming up in politics, his fellow politicians considered him very obnoxious.
Time will tell my FRiend
Jane may well best be known as the one who when asked a question will turn the question into a more specific question or series of questions that not only answers the original questions but leaves the one asking the original question with a deeper understanding of the topic.
A common phrase associated with Jane Jacobs is “WWJJD”
Not a good analogy.
Exactly. Looking back at 1960's urban policy from our current perspective, what is astonishing is the sheer consistency of failure. As far as the big cities were concerned, virtually everything the planners tried to do was wrong: housing; transportation; education; zoning; urban renewal; policing; taxation, business development, and job creation ... regarding urban policy, was there anything LBJ and the Great Society got right?
I raise the point because we regularly stumble across derivative arguments today. There is a tendency for some conservatives, living in mostly suburban areas, to regard modern cities as inherently flawed/corrupt/unliveable/unlovely, etc. I'm one of the outnumbered FR urbanites who defends the other pole of the discussion. Cities have pluses and minuses, as do rural and suburban areas, but city neighborhoods can and should be terrific places to live. I know because I live in what is now a great urban neighborhood. More people should have that opportunity.
Understanding what has gone wrong is essential to figuring out the way back. Understanding begins with the recognition that the great urban decline was not inevitable; America's cities were wrecked by a set of public policies that could hardly have been more destructive had they been deliberately malevolent. Those policies can be changed. Slowly but surely, in many places, this is already happening. The destruction took a couple of decades. Rebuilding is harder and will be the work of generations.
Conservatives shouldn't let latte liberals have all the fun. Conservatives, of course, are likelier to have children sooner, and in larger numbers. That's why fixing the schools is probably a prerequisite for the political rebalancing that cities so desperately need. School choice is probably the most important urban policy issue now on the table, followed closely by an emphasis on mixed use neighborhoods with a wide range of housing options at varying price levels. Quarantining the poor in Cabrini-Green Bantustans was classic LBJ style misguided paternalism; organic development would have led to much healthier alternatives. Jane Jacobs may not have been conservative, but she was right about a lot of things.
If America had a press that cared about results they would have exposed the failure of the liberal programs decades ago. I'm hopeful Trump will bring an analysis like yours to the table in his conversations with black americans.
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