Quote:
Originally Posted by Franco401
The only problem with this sentiment is the idea that Jane Jacobs & co. are somehow responsible for this this commodification rather than the endless stream of developers, politicians and hack architects relentlessly pursuing profit at the expense of what people and cities really need over the last 50 years. Leave the true activists out of it if you're going to say "good things are actually bad".
|
I know the narrative is often spun in a way to make it seem as if Jane & co. had their ideas stolen, although it ignores how these ideas were vulnerable to becoming platforms for commodification. First and foremost, talks of human-scaled design are formalisms, something expected to be replicated elsewhere. We apparently want to rebuild cities to past standards, although we can’t ignore how the old city is a caricature of its former self due to tourism or commodification (Venice residents hosted a funeral for their city not so long ago). While the top-down approach of destroying these places was undeniably a major issue, Jacobs liked to say how cities should be built and function without tackling the core of the issue. Jacobs critiqued “planners” although left the institutions planners answer to relatively unscathed.
This leads onto the blatant contradictions in regards to Jacobs’ relationship with the state. While she condemned the state when it was spearheaded by the ideas of Moses and LeCorbusier, she praised the technocratic approach when it delivered her idea of utopia in other projects. She also provided a thinly veiled critique of the welfare state. Towers in the park public housing projects were a target of hers, which to this day justifies their demolition and replacement by luxury market units because the new-urbanist design is assumed to be “better”. Of course I won’t deny the welfare state was deeply flawed for many reasons, but are we really improving things?
To top things off, I would argue Jacobs started as a grassroots activist but lost that title when she received her grant to write
Death and life of great American cities. From where one may ask? The Rockefeller Foundation… No jokes, look it up. I’m sure many admire the Rockefeller foundation, but if your books are funded by them you’re no longer a community activist. Jane Jacobs was a liberal, in the sense that she wanted to help others without considering how communities could be empowered to help themselves. Her liberalism lost its liberty. Instead, some concrete “right to the city” is needed for real change, although to date that idea has slept in the realm of idealism.
Prev
Linear Mode
