Anthony Flint, author of Wrestling with Moses, wonders whether her legacy has been co-opted. (By the way, it’s Jacobs’s birthday today, May 4 – which is, of course, the reason for Jane’s Walks.)
When Jane started barnstorming planning hearings in the early 1960s, the real decisions really were being made behind closed doors. But now every stakeholder gets equal hearing — and often veto power, as Northeastern University architecture dean George Thrush wrote recently in Boston Magazine. Some of the zeal for participation has morphed into mere NIMBYism — bad for transit-oriented development, bad for density and infill redevelopment, and disastrous for green urban infrastructure
Anthony Flint is surely being disingenuous when he compares Jane Jacobs to the Tea Party–although I don’t know his work, so maybe he isn’t. That would be disappointing…at the very least…
An enjoyable article. There’s little doubt that gentrification and the escalation of real estate prices is the driving motivation, then as now.