The Revitalist

In the wake of this past year's exhibitions on Robert Moses, the Municipal Art Society of New York has put on an exhibition entitled Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York, which in turn prompted this musing by Andrew Blum (via CEOs for Cities). Blum is very eloquent about the dilemma that he sees facing our big cities: how to resolve the conflict between the desire for Jacobsian neighborhoods and the push for greater density. He writes,

We are wedging ourselves between a rock and a hard place: between the pleasures of medium-density living (Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Toronto’s Annex) and the ecological necessity of even more density.

We can resist the extremes of modernism and all its failures; but that does not free us from facing up to the same challenges and inequities that modernism sought to rectify. I don’t know that Jane Jacobs fully accepted this. 

Read the whole article—it will give you something to ponder this weekend.