The simple genius of Jane Jacobs

Okay: I haven't read any of the late Jane Jacobs' works yet. But it's hard not to like what I've read about her work as an activist and her ideas regarding urban planning (most famously made in her seminal 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Looking at them now, these ideas (that urban planning should be focused on people, pedestrians in particular; that strict zoning requirements eliminate the everyday interactions necessary for creating communities; that more people on the streets means less crime etc.) are so forehead-slappingly obvious that it is hard to believe they were ever considered revolutionary. But what sucks really hard is that, in some circles, these simple concepts are still completely alien. Sadly, these are also the circles where urban planning decisions are made.

Here in Edmonton, we have what can only be considered a schizophrenic approach to urban planning. On the one hand, politicos endlessly stress the need for "downtown revitalization" while on the other, hand continue to execute a suburban, car-centric, big-box-friendly model. Big box complexes like South Edmonton Common (the appropriation of the term "common" in this case can only be a vile joke on the part of the developer), filled as they are with shitty chain restaurants, outlet stores and miles of parking (and no sidewalks anywhere: you want to travel the 100 metres from the Urban Barn to the Indigo Books? Get in the car, motherfucker.) sprout like weeds on cheap land on the outskirts (roads and services coming at the expense of taxpayers, natch). Meanwhile, the efforts to bring some life back to the core consist mainly of erecting tons of shoddy condos and "executive lofts" and the concrete wasteland that is Churchill Square. It would be almost comical if it weren't so sad.

Anyway, to say the suburbs suck and North American urban planning is stuck in some kind of time warp to the '50s is to state the obvious. I'd recommend this post at Pandagon, if only for the last paragraph, which sums up why suburbs are not only bad design, but a leading cause of rampant wingnuttery:

You want the answer to why people think, for instance, that gay men are fucking in the streets in liberal cities and teenagers are one pill away from forming sex cults? It's because it's easy to believe that sort of shit when you're holed up in a McMansion and your main contact with the diverse population of America is through the television set

It is sad that Jane Jacobs didn't live to see her simple, people focused ideas becomecurrencymmon crrency of urban planning. Sadly, I think that we're too far gone at this point: the tiping point (to use an annoying buzzword) has passed: we won't stop until we hit the wall.