DESIGNING/RESTORING

Whole Earth, Winter, 1998 by Jane Jacobs

This is about to happen, I think, with our present sprawl and suburbs. They're going out of fashion. I think all kinds of things will happen to them. Again, it isn't one fix or one change. I imagine that they will be thickened up to quite an extent. They'll be denser. Already, shopping centers are getting to be abandoned where there have been too many of them. The first thing to think of would be to bulldoze them and put something else there. But that's not obviously the best choice anymore. You think, what can you put in there that's different? Can you change some of it to housing? Can you have some stores in it? I think that the suburbs will change quite a bit from new, and imaginative, uses of that kind.

SB: What would it take for cities to themselves become a thing of the past? People would say, "Oh yeah, remember when we used to have cities?"

JJ: I think we would have the Dark Ages again. That's what happened the last time.

SB: I looked into that. Europe was de-urbanized by the fall of Rome.

JJ: Sure. That was the big thing that happened. That's one reason I say that rural areas depend on their cities. They get wiped out if the cities do.

SB: But what was the mechanism there? Why would the fall of Rome mean the cities would empty? I don't follow the sequence of events.

JJ: Stewart, you want me to write a whole book that I've already written a couple of times.

Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities changed urban planning and policy by simply asking: what makes a vital city? She's followed through in her home, Toronto, leading a successful plan to stop both a major expressway and the demolition of an entire downtown neighborhood. Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984) connected city vitality to global economics. Systems of Survival(Whole Earth No. 94) displayed the minds of guardians vs. traders in the economies of the world. She is now, at 82, finishing her book on The Nature of Economy. She was willing to be included in this issue of Whole Earth only if Stewart interviewed her (she loves his How Buildings Learn)