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A collection of interviews rely to some extent on the skills of the interviewer to tease out the insights of their subject This collection runs from 1962 when The Death and Life of Great American Cities had just made Jacobs justly famous to the last interview in 2005 not long before her death the following year The first interview reflects Jacobs early activism in New York opposing ill conceived and sometimes rapacious redevelopment schemes Her thinking gradually scales up a process that is revealed in these conversations The self serving financial promises of those initial schemes leads her to see the false premises on which they were based universally within economics Cities and the supply regions that they centre remained a focus of her thought but within the broader context of how economies were claimed to work The observations on which these rest are however those that strike the observer and not necessarily the most important They also rest upon various assumptions about the relationship between cities economies and state form that ought to be questioned This comes out most powerfully in the last interview Ostensibly this is conducted by a Quebecker about the prospects for independence for Quebec Nonetheless it develops into a wide ranging and often prescient analysis of contemporary developments and the problems of reading them through an ahistorical neophilia As a European observer I was particularly drawn to her point that inadequate discourse around the then plans for an EU constitution risked fuelling nationalism Such apercus demonstrate that Jacobs was a penetrating thinker in time as well as space Jane Jacobs The Last Interview and Other Conversations What s not to love about Jane Jacobs A brilliant thinker unafraid to go against the tide wise capable articulate Unfortunately these interviews aren t a great format for her they do not provide sufficient depth to properly explore the ideas raised and the number of typos suggest further editing might just be in order If you re a fan you ll likely read this anyway but if you re new to Jacobs I recommend Systems of Survival Dark Days Ahead or The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs The Last Interview and Other Conversations Having enjoyed The Last Interview featuring Nora Ephron I was looking forward to reading the collection of interviews with Jane Jacobs Reading Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities ten years ago was literally life changing the book gave me a whole different lens with which to understand cities I became deeply interested in urban studies and went back to school to pursue a post grad degree in the area Unfortunately this collection of 4 interviews Disturber of the Peace Eve Auchinloss and Nancy Lynch Mademoiselle Oct 1962 How Westway will Destroy New York Roberta Brandes Gratz New York Feb 1978 Godmother of the American City James Howard Kunstler Metropolis March 2001 and The Last Interview Robin Philpot The Question of Separatism May 2005 was a bit of a letdown The first interview from 1962 made for a promising start We get a feel here of Jacobs views on cities that they have to be very fertile palces economically and socially for the plans of thousands and tens of thousands of people if we have big cities that are unable to offer diverse services and support non standardised commerce and culture then we are not getting the salient advantages As Jacobs puts it What s the point of having the disadvantages and they do exist and none of the advantages of cities She advocates for human centred rather than automobile centred cities We should get rid of automobiles but in a positive way What we need is things that conflict with their needs wider sidewalks space for trees even double lines of trees on some sidewalks dead ends not for foot traffic but for automobiles frequent places for people to cross streets traffic lights they re an abomination to automobiles but a boon to pedestrians And then we should have convenient public transportation We constantly sacrifice all kinds of amenities for automobiles I think we can wear down their number by sacrificing the roadbed to some of our other needs instead It s a switch in values. Jane jacobs walk toronto And criticises planning orthodoxy this grandiosity is inherent in the orthodox planning dogma and it s very simple minded You can t create the texture of a living city in one fell swoop that way Things must grow The kind of planning for a city that would really work would be a sort of informed intelligent improvisation Which is what most of our planning in life is in any case All plans business your children s education whatever are made like this playing it by ear all along the way Urban renewal in particular is a very peculiar form of planning The whole notion of simultaneous uplift for an area has nothing to do with real life or growth. Jane jacobsen bob menendez There s this notion that certain groups of people must be sacrificed for the common good but nobody quite defines what this common good is Actually of course it is made up of a lot of smaller goods. Jane jacobs boek Her criticism of architecture in particular is damning architecture with a capital A has become and interested in itself and less and less interested in the world that uses it. Jacob jane street In terms of function in the old sense one of the most universal spaces is an old brownstone house Look at the different uses these can be put to they are used as homes shops schools offices and none of these uses requires than a minimum of change because the combination of large and small rooms is remarkably adaptable When architecture gets far away from interest in how it s used and in the world that uses it and interested in itself then it s narcissistic And like all things that get far from the truth it begins to have to be smart aleck and say sensational things about itself because it has nothing else to talk about How Westway Will Destroy New York starts off by examining Jacobs opposition to the Lower Manhattan Expressway Jacobs had just come out of saving the West Village from being bulldozed and redeveloped when Father LaMountain of the Church of the Most Holy Cruxifix on Broome Street approached her for help as his church would have been destroyed by the new expressway It gives a good sense of Jacobs views on urban redevelopment how at best it disrupts the urban fabric and at worst destroys it and the problematic cost benefit analyses supporting urban redevelopment projects While highway advocates frequently argue that such efforts create jobs to revitalise the economy Jacobs argues they never tell us who will get those jobs And they never count the jobs that may be lost in the displacement process that inevitably accompanies new development A trade in of the Westway money for transit rehabilitation plus a modest rebuilding of the West Side Highway according to a six month Sierra Club study would deliver 103000 man years of employment both inside and outside of New York City Westway promises only 78000 and most of those will be outside the region in plants manufacturing the steel cement and other component parts and materials What s most of the promised Westway jobs are temporary but many permanent jobs are endangered by the displacement of businesses along the Westway construction site. Jane jacobsen kunst The last two interviews are much less successful at least to me Godmother of the American City is a wide ranging conversation from Jacobs move to New York City how she ventured into the life of a public intellection Jacobs and her families to move to Canada partly so her pacifist sons would not have to be drafted for the war her relationship with Lewis Mumford Jacobs views on economics After a couple of pages the interview starts to meander This might work perhaps if you were watching the interview live or even listening to the interview on the radio podcast But I m not so sure this works in print And there were definitely some segments where I found myself asking what the point of the segment was really and whether the interviewer needed to talk quite so much Like when Kunstler basically started quizzing Jacobs on her thoughts on various major capitals. Jane jacobs book And in The Last Interview Robin Philpot delves into Quebec separatism which was an area Jacobs delved into in her later years This topic is perhaps overly niche for a general audience to appreciate Jane Jacobs The Last Interview and Other Conversations a little redundant simply because of the subject matter but i LOVE this woman so it s hard for me to come up with negatives if you want to learn about jane jacobs this is a good way to do it Jane Jacobs The Last Interview and Other Conversations These interviews so than her writing show Jacobs to be both a person with strong and unique ideas and eminently reasonable To a degree that I assume many of her passionate followers are not It made me wish I could hang out with her even Especially now Jane Jacobs The Last Interview and Other Conversations
| Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview and Other Conversations By Jane Jacobs |
| 1612195342 |
| 9781612195346 |
| 128 |
| Paperback |
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Jane Jacobs OC O. Jane jacobs moses Ont May 4 1916 April 25 2006 was an American born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961 a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States The book has been credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times. Jane jacobs famous book Along with her well known printed works Jacobs is equally well known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway and after moving to Canada in 1968 equally influen Jane Jacobs OC O. Jane jacobs book review Ont May 4 1916 April 25 2006 was an American born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961 a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States The book has been credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times. Jane jacobs parks Along with her well known printed works Jacobs is equally well known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway and after moving to Canada in 1968 equally influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under construction site_link.