[HN Gopher] On Jane Jacobs (2017)
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On Jane Jacobs (2017)
Author : herbertl
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-04-17 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
| languagehacker wrote:
| A nice measured perspective / retrospective on the long-term
| impact of two of Urban Planning's big cornerstone books. Sort of
| suggests that the passage of time is a moderating force for both
| sides of the aisle.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| A lesser known book from Jane Jacobs: Systems of survivals.
|
| Really great book on the nature of corruption. And really the
| problem with capitalism.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival which
| points out her own dichotomous analysis which may be related to
| the liberal/conservative axis being discussed in another thread
| which I started...
| lukebuehler wrote:
| I was coming here to say the same.
|
| The two "moral syndromes" she describes are a great framework
| to understand why, for example, people cannot easily switch
| from business to government work: different moral systems apply
| (aka her "systems of survival").
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Jacobs always struck me as a conservative that leftists like.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Was she conservative?
|
| I don't know much about her politics, besides that she left the
| US for Canada over opposition to the Vietnam War.
| neom wrote:
| She was:
| https://washingtonmonthly.com/2011/12/01/conservatives-
| jane-...
|
| https://mises.org/mises-daily/jane-jacobs-libertarian-
| outsid...
|
| (Big Jacobs fan over here, I've studied her to death)
| CalChris wrote:
| I wouldn't label someone as _conservative_ using urban
| traffic tangles as evidence of bureaucratic idiocy as a
| marker. That sort of glittering generality gets you to
| trains run on time real fast.
|
| I'll ask here as I did above, what is conservatism?
| chimeracoder wrote:
| AFAIK this is a somewhat misleading statement. Most of Jane
| Jacobs's publicly available commentary on political topics
| are in the context of urbanism, where "conservative"
| (especially as that first article defines it) is not in
| line with how modern people would define conservative
| attitudes towards urbanism.
|
| If we look outside the area of urbanism, the picture
| becomes less clear. For example, Jacobs was anti-Communist,
| which we'd consider to be a conservative position by
| definition, but was well within the bounds of mainstream
| politics across the spectrum in the time she was most
| active. She also was outspokenly pro-union, which is
| decidedly _not_ a conservative position in modern politics.
|
| So yes, you can call Jane Jacobs a conservative if you want
| to use Edmund Burke as a reference point, but honestly,
| using Edmund Burke to define conservatism is almost a
| sleight-of-hand parlor trick, given how much modern-day
| conservatives actually disagree with Edmund Burke himself
| about.
| neom wrote:
| I'll lend to that. If you use Edmund Burke as the
| yardstick, calling her conservative is defensible because
| she believed complex social orders evolve from the bottom
| up vs grand schemes. My thought is she generally applied
| this thinking, and that thinking is traditionally
| conservative. I suppose she is a "radical localist" who
| stole bits she liked from every side... was a pragmatic,
| anti-ideologue, but I do still feel in reading her works,
| she's is more frequently aligned conservatives than not.
|
| I suppose that is also part of the joy in Jane.
| hylaride wrote:
| She was pro-market, in many ways. She was mostly against top-
| down development that overrode people that were already in
| place (at the time it happened to be government ramming
| highways through cities using eminent domain). So in some
| ways she's "conservative" in that she likes property rights,
| less zoning, etc.
|
| Urban left-leaning people tend to like her because she's very
| human-scale focused. Many use her anti-highway work to rally
| against other change (often private and market oriented.
| Though I love her work to death, I've found a lot of what
| most of us would call NIMBYs and champagne socialists cite
| her when opposing a lot of stuff (housing they don't like,
| etc).
|
| This reason interview (libertarian org) outlines a lot of it:
| https://reason.com/2001/06/01/city-views-2/
| neom wrote:
| Similar to Ed Glaeser. I've spent a lot of time with Ed, I'm
| for sure a socialist, he's very right leaning, yet Ed and I
| always have great conversations, and funnily: Ed thinks Jane is
| great. Highly recommend Eds books, I started a whole startup
| after I read Triumph of the City, heh.
| ghaff wrote:
| A conservative in the sense that anti-car urbanists can pick
| and choose things they really like from (such as not building a
| highway through Washington Square Park). Many of those same
| folks are probably less fond of keeping (as the article notes
| the fairly atypical) Greenwich Village encased in amber or at
| least up to the local community to evolve, opposition to the
| Lincoln Center (though there were certainly community costs),
| and opposition to non-luxury high-rise developments generally
| in many cases.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| What makes you think that?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Thought great Americans cities were "great" when they emerged
| out of small, medium and large players interacting through
| markets and other traditional institutions. Thought they were
| threatened by central planners with big ideas (e.g. Robert
| Moses) but no respect for the status quo.
|
| See also
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nisbet
|
| and the really good book
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2421900.Watch_On_The_Rig.
| ..
|
| which I didn't read when I was a kid and found it at the
| public library because the first chapter was about how
| William F. Buckley was a pompous ass but I came to enjoy as
| an adult because in later chapters he finds a lot of positive
| things to say about conservative thinkers 40 years ago when
| the movement had a better positive/negative ratio.
| woah wrote:
| Leftists tend to be pretty conservative
| altruios wrote:
| A common saying is a politically incorrect leftist sayings is
| mistakable from alt-right rhetoric. The shoe-horse theory...
|
| It's wrong (the shoe-horse), But a lot of people think(have
| been told) that.
| floren wrote:
| Horseshoe.
| altruios wrote:
| Wow that was a big derp. Thank you.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| She's probably just your average centrist, like 90% of people.
| CalChris wrote:
| I guess I'm what you'd call a leftist (but I prefer
| progressive). I read _Life+Death_ and _Dark Age Ahead_. Jacobs
| never struck me as conservative, whatever that even means. A
| preservationist, to be sure. I don 't think _Dark Age Ahead_ is
| going to be handed out at CPAC. Burned maybe.
|
| BTW, what does conservative mean?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| An essay in the 1964 book _Ideology and Discontent_ makes the
| case that the public isn 't qualified to have an opinion and
| found that shockingly low numbers of people can define
| "liberal" and "conservative" but (1) that was when hardly
| anyone went to college and (2) the author had the
| structuralist view that ideology was a fight between
| "marxism" and "anti-marxism" and wouldn't really recognize,
| say, a black nationalist or an ecofeminist as having an
| advanced ideology.
|
| It's a running gag that liberals don't liberate and that
| conservatives don't conserve but I think liberals who
| liberate and conservatives who conserve have something to
| contribute.
|
| I think Jane's respect for existing institutions, places and
| organizations that arise out of markets and fear of
| centralized planning are conservative. It makes me think of
| how Petroski wrote a whole book about pencils that comes to
| the conclusion that central planning doesn't work because no
| individual knows how to make a pencil.
| CalChris wrote:
| I see that 'conservatives' and 'libertarians' are claiming
| her. I'm not sure she'd claim them. She was anti-ideology.
|
| But this conservativism you speak of, it's such a squishy
| term. Respect for existing institutions, places and
| organizations fits when it fits and then doesn't when it
| doesn't. Right now, it doesn't.
|
| Buckley (oh so nobly) said _A conservative is someone who
| stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one
| is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those
| who so urge it_. But then he also said that he 'd _be for
| the most right, viable candidate who could win_. So much
| for standing athwart history.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure conservative is the best term because it
| carries a lot of other baggage especially these days. But
| favors the status quo, preservationist, change mostly based
| on community wishes, etc. are all probably pretty fair.
| CalChris wrote:
| I think it's reductionist to the point of disrespectful to
| label her with any sort of ideology. What I remember from
| her books was some really good ideas. My favorite was
| gradual money vs cataclysmic money.
| zknow wrote:
| no one really knows
| CalRobert wrote:
| Similarly, strongtowns.org was born of conservative principles
| and fiscal responsibility.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| It's as if the terms "conservative" and "liberal" and "left"
| and "right" have decreasing descriptive power as time moves on.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Stewart Brand Interviews Jane Jacobs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37969169 - Oct 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Jane Jacobs ' Legacy (2006) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29947020 - Jan 2022 (6
| comments)
|
| _Jane Jacobs ' Radical Legacy (2006)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228562 - Feb 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Jane Jacobs: The Champion of Little Plans_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17262331 - June 2018 (15
| comments)
|
| _An Ad Hoc Affair: Jane Jacobs's Clear-Eyed Vision of Humanity_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577008 - Feb 2017 (17
| comments)
|
| _Bright Lights, Small Government: Why libertarians adore Jane
| Jacobs_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13038972 - Nov
| 2016 (3 comments)
|
| _The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12772983 - Oct 2016 (15
| comments)
|
| _It 's the cities, stupid - Jane Jacobs' macroeconomics (2005)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10834435 - Jan 2016 (26
| comments)
|
| _A Conversation with Jane Jacobs_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850288 - June 2013 (1
| comment) (<-- posted by pg!)
|
| _How Jane Jacobs saved New York City 's soul_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3091165 - Oct 2011 (3
| comments)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The article reminds me of commentary I have read in the past on
| Elinor Ostrom, another innovative thinker who the left likes
| because she was female and opposed the status quo received
| wisdom, but feel uncomfortable with because she was very
| skeptical of Big Plans from the federal government or other
| remote centers of power. If want to advocate for Big Plans to
| achieve leftist ideals, then being told that Big Plans From The
| Center Of Power are the main source of the problem, is a
| difficult truth to accept.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a shame when people let current alliances override their
| actual thinking on general principles. I mean, it is necessary
| to make compromises for the sake of accomplishing things, but
| we should be aware of the fact that it is a compromise.
|
| Also, I sort of wish the language around "big plans from the
| center of power" was more... nuanced I guess. Like we can
| believe that centralized organizations generally are not so bad
| for producing healthcare guidance but still not want them to
| make people's healthcare decisions for them.
| patcon wrote:
| I feel for this. There's a "bothness" that's important for
| organizing from the center and from the edges. Either
| approach in isolation would utterly fail. Either approach
| overrepresented beyond the other fails to a lesser degree.
| Finding the razor edge balance that (1) supports the best
| decisions to navigate a model of the future that _actually_
| unfolds and (2) that 's stable in a given context, that is
| the whole of the work imho
| patcon wrote:
| Wat? I'm left and for decentralising power, lots of ppl I know
| in my political circles love Ostrom. Leftist people who think
| concentration of power is the solution don't fangirl over her.
| Her whole jam is about "downloading" power ("down" as in, to
| lower levels of government) and distributing responsibility.
| ppl who aren't down with that have no reason to be interested
| in her work.
|
| So I'm not actually seeing any dissonance or contradiction from
| inside communities that appreciate her work?
| kappasan wrote:
| A big Jacobs fan here, but I remember reading her book (The Death
| and Life of...) and also about Robert Moses and thinking "hmm
| both sides have a point" so she'd probably hate me if she was
| still alive.
|
| I personally think she was a bit _too_ trusting of the
| (cybernetics-adjacent?) idea of order spontaneously arising from
| chaos.
| ghaff wrote:
| I live a ways outside of Boston. Local opposition did kill some
| prior projects that would have probably been unfortunate. But
| the Big Dig was a big net win at the end of a long day--thank
| you rest of the country for funding thanks to Tip O'Neill.
| Would never have happened as purely a grassroots thing.
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