Recently, I read Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Jonathan Mahler’s Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning. Due to her residence in New York City for many years, Jacobs’ theory is illustrated by the real-life examples of politics, economics, and city planning recorded by Mahler in his study of 1977 Gotham.
Both authors display a strong understanding of history and the events that have led to the current state of New York City. Unfortunately, both possess a rambling writing style that creates many excruciating chapters. Editors have jobs because they do good work.
Written in the 1960s, Great American Cities is somewhat dated; a revision would have brought the ideas up to date. There are some prejudiced comments that no longer apply. For example, women don’t stay at home to supervise children and hiring women to work as elevator attendants in dangerous apartment buildings are somewhat dated. I don’t think that race necessarily equates with socio-economic factors but Jacobs’ treats the two as the same.
Many of Jacobs’ premises are illustrated by narrow examples, instead of studies. Jacobs’ talks about understanding a problem before trying to solve it and lists three types of problems: simplicity (two variables, X and Y), disorganized complexity (countless variables, solved with statistics and probabilities), and organized complexity (interconnected variables, such as life sciences and city planning). The third type requires people to think about problem-solving processes and observe how small clues demonstrate how the larger systems are operating.
Yet until the final chapter, Jacobs does not provide any examples of such complicated problems. Mahler does a far better job showing readers how Reggie Jackson and the New York Yankees inspired citizens, how Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post influenced the mayor’s election, and how neglect by police and politicians incited the rage and frustration of the riots in Harlem. Great American Cities often takes five pages to describe how street-lights should favour buses; Bronx is Burning jumps from issue to issue at a sometimes frenetic pace, which is welcome because it seems to symbolize the organized chaos of New York City.
Both show, sometimes comically, sometimes tragically, how too many levels of government botch projects because of comical misunderstandings. Jacobs recounts how several public housing buildings in New York City burned down because of a mix-up between three agencies delayed fire inspections by up to a year. Mahler writes about how incompetent unionized management at Consolidated Edison caused a huge blackout during the hottest time of the summer because they couldn’t make key decisions. Several cumbersome entities are shown as creating the economic justification for their existence, rather than serving the people who need their help.
Jance Jacobs believes that cities are complex functional systems of order, not chaos. Despite this sophistication, basic common sense and understanding can be employed to make things better. Diversity is important, cities are integral in raising children and modeling the way, people must have pride in their communities, roads should give preferences to transit and vehicles such as delivery trucks which stimulate economic growth. Don’t concentrate all the interesting cultural buildings downtown because then there will be no reason for people to stay in their own communities. Little things that would still work today despite the age of the book.
Whether a reader reaches the end of Great American Cities (I did, barely) or not, I think that there are two crucial points that can apply to any field. One, understand the crisis and create solutions that address specific problems. Two, “life attracts life” as Jane Jacobs, and whether using technology or cities or something else, people are still interacting with each other and it’s important to appreciate how this energy makes various places, events, institutions, traditions, buildings, etc. attractive and how it can’t be simply removed and relocated somewhere else.
Finally, I can start reading Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling.