by Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
Two titans died in recent weeks at advanced ages, one of them over-appreciated and one of them under appreciated. The first was Jane Jacobs, who died in Toronto on April 26 at age 89. The second was John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on April 30 at age 97.
I was a fan of both of these people, having read some of their extensive bodies of work, having had the good luck to meet both of them, and in the case of Jacobs, corresponded with her for a time. In terms of our region, it's important to look at both of their legacies: Jacobs for framing the debate in urban planning, and Galbraith on the role of government in general.
Let's look at Jacobs first, and why I believe the merits of her work are seen in too bright a light, and her deficiencies not seen enough, if at all.
Like a clear and nourishing fountain, the stream of wisdom and good sense emanating from the small house near downtown Toronto was a wonderful thing. Jacobs lead an unusually productive life. She not only managed to change the way we thought about urban planning- her revolutionary rhetoric became the new status quo - but she actually accomplished concrete things, like stopping a freeway from being built through the middle of Manhattan. She was an effective thinker and an effective activist. She will be remembered for championing the traditional city form of gridded streets, mixed use, high density but small scale. Those who have read her work more closely will remember her approach to things, which started with looking at things as they actually are, and trying to figure out how they worked, and only then how they should work. She toppled the misguided notions of 60s-era planners, whose overly theoretical models were like some alien beings, descending on more nuanced places.
I was and am a great fan of Jacobs. But despite her admitted perceptiveness, she also had blind spots. In her celebration of the Small, she missed the importance of the Big. By "Big," I mean many things, but one of them certainly is infrastructure. When it came to cities, Jacobs revered the small scale, be it the narrow street with the small shop, to the lone inventor working above the shop who was part of the great, big metropolis she also loved. Jacobs did love big cities. But what Jacobs didn't see as clearly was the big subway running beneath the small quaint city street, or the even larger water tunnel nearby, both of which created a context in which both the classic urban neighborhood and the big-city economy could prosper.
Her former home of Greenwich Village, which Jacobs surely loved until her passing, despite its evolution into mostly a home for the rich, had its basic form set in the mid 19th century as growth moved up the island of Manhattan based on a booming economy spurred by the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825. This was the type of mega-project that Jacobs probably would have opposed, if she had been around. Yet it sealed New York's position as the premier commercial city in The New World. Greenwich Village would never have developed without it. In the 20th century, it was the construction of the subway system and commuter rail system, as well as the big water tunnels, which in turn were made possible or at least more likely by the merger of Brooklyn and New York into one big city, that kept these inner city areas vital. As far as I know, Jacobs missed all that.
Jacobs' general lack of appreciation for infrastructure brings us to her lack of appreciation for the thing that builds infrastructure, which is big government. I suspect this stemmed in part because of her fight against Robert Moses, the megalomaniac master builder who wielded concrete like an avenging angel. The other part probably was fueled by her opposition to the Vietnam War, which was wielded by an even bigger federal government. In her analysis of cities, smaller was almost always better. In her analysis of nations, she was an advocate of Quebec breaking off from Canada. She described the United States as one of the "monster countries," along with India, China and the former Soviet Union, that behaved more like uncontrollable pathologies than actor-driven democracies. While this analysis provokes thought, it is an example of her distrust of all things gigantic. Probably most importantly for the Tri-state region, she was an anti-regionalist, seeing in regionalism a misguided attempt to work well on a large level, when it was hard enough to work well on a small scale. As a fellow at the Regional Plan Association, an organization that highlights the value of regionalism, I fervently disagree with her view on this.
Of course, if big government had tried to put a highway through my home, and at the same time tried to steal my sons and send them away to die in an immoral foreign war, I would be against big government too. I might even be against regionalism.
But be that as it may, Jacob's lack of respect for government and the systems government builds seems to have led her to a flawed view of how urban places emerge. Whatever the merits of Greenwich Village or her own Yorktown neighborhood in Toronto, their streets and buildings are not something that can be exactly copied, and made to work in say, the suburbs of Phoenix, like a wind-up clock. These inner city neighborhoods function only because they are part of a larger whole, which includes both transportation systems that allow people to live without cars, and an economy that gives them income. If we are to build new urban places, we must be mindful of their larger context. Jacob's overly intense focus on narrow streets, mixed use and low-rise buildings has led her followers to focus too much on them as well. If you love roses, you should study the soil that produces them, not just the design of their stems and petals.
Which brings us to Mr. Galbraith. The economist admired government, and was a consistent advocate for it taking a larger, more conscious role in the creation of our economy and society. I say he is less appreciated now because many current economists, beguiled by the wonder of complex mathematical formulas, have missed what is the proper and more fundamental role of economics, which is constructing an economic system in the first place through a set of laws and policies.
I saw Galbraith speak to a small gathering at the Harvard Club in Boston in roughly late 1999. The dot.com boom was still soaring, and the lean, tall man with the angular face, then in his nineties, somewhat nervously told the audience that he persisted in his view that the tech boom was going to end with a crash, as so many other booms had. Galbraith, the author of books on the 1929 crash and the phenomena of crashes in general, said that he had advised the president of Harvard to begin pulling some of the university's endowments out of the stock market, in order to safeguard it.
He was right. A few months later, even sooner than Galbraith had cautiously predicted, investors pulled their money out of hundreds of flimsy high-tech companies, bringing their stock prices down, down, down. With it came the economy as a whole.
This kind of prescience shown through all of Galbraith's writing I have had the chance to read. Besides being a good writer, the tall gentleman was simply likable. As was Jacobs of course. They must have been aware of each other. I wonder what they thought of each other. I'm sure each had read much of the other's work, given that Jacobs actually wrote more about economics than cities, and Galbraith wrote so much about society in general. Whatever their differences, they both bubbled forth a kind of basic good sense, that seemed simple, but was anything but.
Now with both absent, we should take their words in the probing spirit of inquiry that both were accustomed to use, and not let either's work become sanctified into orthodoxy.
Two titans died in recent weeks at advanced ages, one of them over-appreciated and one of them under appreciated. The first was Jane Jacobs, who died in Toronto on April 26 at age 89. The second was John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on April 30 at age 97.
I was a fan of both of these people, having read some of their extensive bodies of work, having had the good luck to meet both of them, and in the case of Jacobs, corresponded with her for a time. In terms of our region, it's important to look at both of their legacies: Jacobs for framing the debate in urban planning, and Galbraith on the role of government in general.
Let's look at Jacobs first, and why I believe the merits of her work are seen in too bright a light, and her deficiencies not seen enough, if at all.
Like a clear and nourishing fountain, the stream of wisdom and good sense emanating from the small house near downtown Toronto was a wonderful thing. Jacobs lead an unusually productive life. She not only managed to change the way we thought about urban planning- her revolutionary rhetoric became the new status quo - but she actually accomplished concrete things, like stopping a freeway from being built through the middle of Manhattan. She was an effective thinker and an effective activist. She will be remembered for championing the traditional city form of gridded streets, mixed use, high density but small scale. Those who have read her work more closely will remember her approach to things, which started with looking at things as they actually are, and trying to figure out how they worked, and only then how they should work. She toppled the misguided notions of 60s-era planners, whose overly theoretical models were like some alien beings, descending on more nuanced places.
I was and am a great fan of Jacobs. But despite her admitted perceptiveness, she also had blind spots. In her celebration of the Small, she missed the importance of the Big. By "Big," I mean many things, but one of them certainly is infrastructure. When it came to cities, Jacobs revered the small scale, be it the narrow street with the small shop, to the lone inventor working above the shop who was part of the great, big metropolis she also loved. Jacobs did love big cities. But what Jacobs didn't see as clearly was the big subway running beneath the small quaint city street, or the even larger water tunnel nearby, both of which created a context in which both the classic urban neighborhood and the big-city economy could prosper.
Her former home of Greenwich Village, which Jacobs surely loved until her passing, despite its evolution into mostly a home for the rich, had its basic form set in the mid 19th century as growth moved up the island of Manhattan based on a booming economy spurred by the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825. This was the type of mega-project that Jacobs probably would have opposed, if she had been around. Yet it sealed New York's position as the premier commercial city in The New World. Greenwich Village would never have developed without it. In the 20th century, it was the construction of the subway system and commuter rail system, as well as the big water tunnels, which in turn were made possible or at least more likely by the merger of Brooklyn and New York into one big city, that kept these inner city areas vital. As far as I know, Jacobs missed all that.
Jacobs' general lack of appreciation for infrastructure brings us to her lack of appreciation for the thing that builds infrastructure, which is big government. I suspect this stemmed in part because of her fight against Robert Moses, the megalomaniac master builder who wielded concrete like an avenging angel. The other part probably was fueled by her opposition to the Vietnam War, which was wielded by an even bigger federal government. In her analysis of cities, smaller was almost always better. In her analysis of nations, she was an advocate of Quebec breaking off from Canada. She described the United States as one of the "monster countries," along with India, China and the former Soviet Union, that behaved more like uncontrollable pathologies than actor-driven democracies. While this analysis provokes thought, it is an example of her distrust of all things gigantic. Probably most importantly for the Tri-state region, she was an anti-regionalist, seeing in regionalism a misguided attempt to work well on a large level, when it was hard enough to work well on a small scale. As a fellow at the Regional Plan Association, an organization that highlights the value of regionalism, I fervently disagree with her view on this.
Of course, if big government had tried to put a highway through my home, and at the same time tried to steal my sons and send them away to die in an immoral foreign war, I would be against big government too. I might even be against regionalism.
But be that as it may, Jacob's lack of respect for government and the systems government builds seems to have led her to a flawed view of how urban places emerge. Whatever the merits of Greenwich Village or her own Yorktown neighborhood in Toronto, their streets and buildings are not something that can be exactly copied, and made to work in say, the suburbs of Phoenix, like a wind-up clock. These inner city neighborhoods function only because they are part of a larger whole, which includes both transportation systems that allow people to live without cars, and an economy that gives them income. If we are to build new urban places, we must be mindful of their larger context. Jacob's overly intense focus on narrow streets, mixed use and low-rise buildings has led her followers to focus too much on them as well. If you love roses, you should study the soil that produces them, not just the design of their stems and petals.
Which brings us to Mr. Galbraith. The economist admired government, and was a consistent advocate for it taking a larger, more conscious role in the creation of our economy and society. I say he is less appreciated now because many current economists, beguiled by the wonder of complex mathematical formulas, have missed what is the proper and more fundamental role of economics, which is constructing an economic system in the first place through a set of laws and policies.
I saw Galbraith speak to a small gathering at the Harvard Club in Boston in roughly late 1999. The dot.com boom was still soaring, and the lean, tall man with the angular face, then in his nineties, somewhat nervously told the audience that he persisted in his view that the tech boom was going to end with a crash, as so many other booms had. Galbraith, the author of books on the 1929 crash and the phenomena of crashes in general, said that he had advised the president of Harvard to begin pulling some of the university's endowments out of the stock market, in order to safeguard it.
He was right. A few months later, even sooner than Galbraith had cautiously predicted, investors pulled their money out of hundreds of flimsy high-tech companies, bringing their stock prices down, down, down. With it came the economy as a whole.
This kind of prescience shown through all of Galbraith's writing I have had the chance to read. Besides being a good writer, the tall gentleman was simply likable. As was Jacobs of course. They must have been aware of each other. I wonder what they thought of each other. I'm sure each had read much of the other's work, given that Jacobs actually wrote more about economics than cities, and Galbraith wrote so much about society in general. Whatever their differences, they both bubbled forth a kind of basic good sense, that seemed simple, but was anything but.
Now with both absent, we should take their words in the probing spirit of inquiry that both were accustomed to use, and not let either's work become sanctified into orthodoxy.
@RegionalPlan