Strong Towns Is Jane Jacobs in Action
We've often said at Strong Towns that you can't achieve Jane Jacobs ends via Robert Moses means. The problems created by bad centralized policies imposed at a large scale won't be resolved by simply imposing better centralized policies at a large scale. Even so, there are many who want to try.
There is a strain of thought that suggests that, if only it had been Jane Jacobs in charge instead of Robert Moses, we would have gotten sidewalks and transit instead of highways and interchanges. This thinking does a massive disservice to Jacobs and her brilliant insights on cities.
Very explicitly, Jacobs embraced the block-level chaos of cities as a feature, not a flaw. She explained how successful neighborhoods are organic creations, how they grow incrementally out of the actions of many different individuals. She was a fierce critic of centralized planning, large transformative projects, and programs unconstrained by economic reality.
We could say that Jane Jacobs was very Strong Towns, but we all know who influenced whom.
Strong Towns founder and president, Charles Marohn, was invited to the Lit with Charles podcast to discuss Jane Jacobs’ seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the impact it has had on urban planning and the building of cities.
“I just love her so much,” Marohn says, at one point. If you love Jane Jacobs, too, or want to learn more about her views and how Strong Towns advocates are working to make them a reality, you will want to explore this conversation.
We have provided a full transcript below to go along with the audio version, which we share here with the permission of the Lit with Charles podcast.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
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