Next American City » Buzz » The Urban Black Swan Jane Jacobs considered the city a complex organism, a series of interlocking and often unnoticed relationships that together form a greater whole. If it’s true (and I think it is) that cities are inherently complex, and it’s true (and I think it is) that completely unpredicted events have an outsized impact on history, then can we really predict the “Best Cities for the Next Decade?” Even if we can, what is the best way to gauge the odds of future urban success? Is it a fool’s errand?

Next American City » Buzz » The Urban Black Swan

Jane Jacobs considered the city a complex organism, a series of interlocking and often unnoticed relationships that together form a greater whole. If it’s true (and I think it is) that cities are inherently complex, and it’s true (and I think it is) that completely unpredicted events have an outsized impact on history, then can we really predict the “Best Cities for the Next Decade?” Even if we can, what is the best way to gauge the odds of future urban success? Is it a fool’s errand?

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“Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance. But vital cities are not helpless to combat even the most difficult problems.”

Jane Jacobs, american sociologist (1916-2006) (via publicdesignfestival)

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kerr: thepublics: Living for the City: On Jane Jacobs Cities, Jane Jacobs famously observed, offer “a problem in handling organized complexity.” In her first and still most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, Jacobs argued that cities are not chaotic or irrational; they are essentially systems of interrelated variables collected in an organic whole. The challenge, she wrote, was to sense the patterns at work in the vast array of variables. Something similar could be said for writing about cities. How does one coax the thread of a narrative from the scrum and fray of urban life? DH: Note, must jump paywall for full article.

kerr:

thepublics:

Living for the City: On Jane Jacobs

Cities, Jane Jacobs famously observed, offer “a problem in handling organized complexity.” In her first and still most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, Jacobs argued that cities are not chaotic or irrational; they are essentially systems of interrelated variables collected in an organic whole. The challenge, she wrote, was to sense the patterns at work in the vast array of variables. Something similar could be said for writing about cities. How does one coax the thread of a narrative from the scrum and fray of urban life?

DH: Note, must jump paywall for full article.

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