American Dream

Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities died after a stroke at age 89. News reports on her death claimed that her most famous book "questioned the sprawling suburbs that characterized urban planning, saying it was killing inner cities and discouraging the economic vitality that springs organically from neighbourhoods."

In fact, The Death and Life questioned the urban renewal plans that planners were using to destroy inner-city neighborhoods. While Jacobs was not personally fond of the suburbs, she was tolerant of them but intolerant of urban planners who wanted to impose their ideas on other people. She did not blame the suburbs for "killing inner cities"; she blamed urban planners, whom she described as "know-it-alls (who also possessed a supposed knowledge of the future) who wade into a piece of the world and its population with visions of how to transform the whole shebang and proceed to try to do it."

While she carefully described inner city life in detail, she also warned against applying her observations to small towns or suburban areas. Yet this is exactly what urban planners have done; so-called smart growth is an overt attempt to convert suburban areas into the inner-city neighborhoods that Jacobs described in her book.

Jane Jacobs and the truth; R.I.P.