Mini-rant
I'm sorry - I loathe James Howard Kunstler. And it makes me sick to read him in conversation with Jane 'Goddess' Jacobs. Twisting her into a New Urbanist - ugh. He's so clever with his words, yet so stupid in their content. She is, sadly, getting old and probably surrounded with too many cronies, but yet almost everything she says shines with perception and intelligence. Unlike his loathsomely crude judgements.
A little quote from JHK: "[The Garden City movement] was in some ways another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for—including Mumford who got sucked in really big."
Are we going to be saying in 50 years that New Urbanism was another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for - including Jane Jacobs? Poor woman. What a sad misuse of her central work that it becomes the mantra for a whole lot of pastiche, sentimental, claustrophobic, fake 'urbanism'.
A little quote from JHK: "[The Garden City movement] was in some ways another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for—including Mumford who got sucked in really big."
Are we going to be saying in 50 years that New Urbanism was another one of those really bad ideas that a lot of intelligent people fell for - including Jane Jacobs? Poor woman. What a sad misuse of her central work that it becomes the mantra for a whole lot of pastiche, sentimental, claustrophobic, fake 'urbanism'.
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