Jane Jacobs- Neighborhood Specialist

To hunt for city neighborhood touchstones of success in high standards of physical facilities, or in supposedly competent an nonproblem populations, or in nostalgic memories of town life, is a waste of time. It evades the meat of the question, which is the problem of what city neighborhoods do, if anything, that may be socially and economically useful in cities themselves, and how they do it.

We shall have something solid to chew on if we think of city neighborhoods as mundane organs of self-government. Our failures with city neighborhoods are, ultimately, failures in localized self-government. And our successes are successes at localized self-government. I am using self-government in its broadest sense, meaning both the informal and formal self-management of society.

I will be hosting a reading group for Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. More information to follow.