If self-government in [a city neighborhood] is to work, underlying any float of population must be a continuity of people who have forged neighborhood networks.  These networks are a city’s irreplaceable social capital.  Whenever the capital is lost, from whatever cause, the income from it disappears, never to return until and unless new capital is slowly and chancily accumulated. …

Over intervals of time, many people change their jobs and the locations of their jobs, shift or enlarge their outside friendships and interests, change their family sizes, change their incomes up or down, even change many of their tastes.  In short they live, rather than just exist.  If they live in diversified, rather than monotonous, districts… and if they like the place, they can stay put despite changes in the locales or natures of their other pursuits or interests. …

However, this asset has to be capitalized upon.  It is thrown away where districts are handicapped by sameness and are suitable, therefore, to only a narrow range of incomes, tastes and family circumstances.  Neighborhood accommodations for fixed, bodiless, statistical people are accommodations for instability.  The people in them, as statistics, may stay the same.  But the people in them, as people, do not.  Such places are forever way stations.  (pp. 139-140)

A few questions to ponder:  Assuming that Jacobs is right, what role does the Church play in promoting such diversity in order indirectly to contribute to the formation of this social capital?  To what extent does it assume any responsibility of contributing directly to such social capital?  Can any distinction be drawn between the transience of the members of a church and that of the church itself?

This is from The Death and Life of Great American Cities:

The first thing to understand is that the public peace -- the sidewalk and street peace -- of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.

And this:

One-age construction in city areas is sometimes protected nowadays from the threat of more efficient and responsible commercial competition. This protection -- which is nothing more or less than commercial monopoly -- is considered very "progressive" in planning circles ... the Hyde Park/Kenwood renewal district in Chicago reserves a monopoly on almost all commerce for a suburban-type shopping center to be the property of that plan's central developer.

I grew up in Hyde Park, and I still love it and think of it as home, but we do very badly at urban planning. I've heard stories of a distant past when there were blues clubs and restaurants open late -- now, not only is there nothing to do in the evenings, but we have so little retail that I can't even buy a pair of socks without getting in a car. Part of the problem is that the University has too much control over the neighborhood -- should it really be deciding which grocery store to allow in? Naturally there are misjudgments, and we end up with empty blocks and no lively commerce to encourage people to use their streets.

Here's a good Reason magazine interview with Jacobs from a few years ago, and here's a criticism of how her work is sometimes misinterpreted.
Here's her obituary in the New York Times. I like her habit of imaginary conversations explaining the modern world to Benjamin Franklin. I used to do that with George Bernard Shaw, who I think would have taken the future in stride more than most of his contemporaries.

Questo blog serve a far conoscere il pensiero di Jane Jacobs in Italia e a dirle grazie.

Vai a: duecento anni di teorie economiche da buttare

I think protecting people's rights is important (some people call this freedom). I also think economic and social justice is important, and that living sustainably (some would say green) goes along with this. I think economic and social justice gives people freedom as well -- freedom to be the human beings we are meant to be. I know there are many others who agree with me.

Some people think violence is necessary in order to protect these rights and freedoms. Some of the same people think it's necessary to violate the rights of some people in order to protect others. They place a high priority on security above all else.

Right or wrong aside, it's unlikely that people who are strongly convinced of either of these points of view will change to the other. They see the whole world through this lens. These worldviews affect many different issues that people are concerned about, including the economy, military action, use of torture, protecting the environment, and more.

Jane Jacobs wrote in her book Systems of Survival about two systems at work in our society: the Guardian syndrome and the Commerce syndrome. The Guardian syndrome assumes that one does what it takes to protect society, even if that requires force or deception. The Commerce syndrome is concerned with honesty, efficiency, inventiveness, and collaboration. Jacobs said that problems occur when the values of one syndrome are applied to the other system.

This book bothered me when I read it, because I simply can't believe that it's morally OK for Guardians to use violence and deception -- especially deception -- whenever it seems necessary. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. I'm looking at it as it applies to the Bush administration (lies, deception, unnecessary war, unlawful imprisonment, torture). If I think about a police officer, it makes more sense. There are certainly situations where I appreciate police using force to protect the public. Then again, we do have to make sure that it's a reasonable use of force! And we have to be sure that police are respecting people's rights. So, I just can't see Guardians being given license to do ANYTHING in the name of protecting the public.

Isn't there a better way? Or are we doomed to repeat the past?

Perhaps that's a good question for my other blog.

In "Last Call, Bohemia" in this month's (July) Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens observes how London, Paris and San Francisco - also renowned for neighborhoods which foster climates of creativity and culture, havens for "the artists, exiles and misfits" - have "learned" and adopted a hands off policy towards building un-affordable, big box monstrosities in these areas. What will it take for real-estate-obsessed New York City to do the same?

Hitchens' focuses on these havens as places for people who "regenerate the culture." Within the article, he targets the St. Vincents/Rudin Management "plan" to remake a large swath of the West Village for "luxury housing" and a new medical building as exactly the type development that should be stopped. He explores what it means not just the Village, but for the City at large.

Hitchens writes:

It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran.

Jane Jacobs in 1961 argued for this same importance: the importance of retaining some of "the old," buildings which allowed for greater diversity of uses (and lower costs), amidst the "new," construction which would need high end and less unique businesses to support it.

When your whole city begins to look overrun with the "new," then what do you do?

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs wrote, "To be sure, city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point, or part of it. That this should happen is in keeping with one of the missions of cities."

Yet how do you regulate that? And should you have to?

Certainly, under Mayor Bloomberg, there is the homogenization factor.

The City's redesign plans for Washington Square Park illustrate no understanding or acknowledgment (and, perhaps, purposefully) of the "strange," the unique, bohemia or diversity.

Shouldn't we live in a society that values places like Washington Square Park as is? Instead of protecting Wall Street and tourism, wouldn't we like to live in a place where the quaint and historical buildings around Washington Square and throughout the West and East Village that NYU has subsumed wouldn't be touched?

Hitchens continues, "Those who don't live in such threatened districts nonetheless have a stake in this quarrel and some skin in this game, because on the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that but-more impoverishingly still-we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost."

* * *

Photo: Ed Yourdon

The newspapers have been running articles about changing consumer habits since the price of gas started to reach $4 a gallon. These are either puff pieces about the benefits of public transportation (this one is about public transit in Europe), or articles lamenting the woes of people who are stuck in suburbia, unable anymore to afford the dream of The City of Tomorrow.

Since 2006 when the total population of Earth tipped from 51% rural to 51% urban, making the planet an "urban planet" for the first time, it has become increasingly clear that cities will once again become the laboratories for the next phase of human development. What might this mean for New York City?

Two immediate scenarios are getting play in the popular press, both of them rooted in classical economics, both of them hinted at in John Tierney's NY Times blog entry, "Malthus v. the Singluarity". On one hand eighteenth century British economist Thomas Malthus warned that resource shortages would lead to economic, social and cultural collapse. (Malthus inspired Carlyle to call economics "the dismal science.") On the other hand, Adam Smith and his tradition argues that the invisible hand of the market will prompt individuals to find creative ways to increase wealth and consequently promote growth. These two distinct narratives are tragedy and comedy respectively. The tragedians tell us that because oil production may have peaked and there are no infrastructure alternatives to gasoline powered automobiles we are headed toward a cataclysm if public policy isn't brought into line. This is the tone of Paul Krugman's editorial in the NY Times. Steven Levitt's opinion in his NY TImes blog is comedy because it posits a happy ending: high gas prices will spur private innovation and growth. Which is more likely?

Probably the truth is somewhere in between. Contrary to Levitt's optimism, it seems unlikely that the investment necessary to retool our infrastructure will come solely from the mythical "free market". Markets are not sentient, though freemarketeers and mainstream economists often like to describe them that way, and though they may produce innovative short term solutions, they also may produce insoluble long term headaches -- like the traffic jam that happens every year when all "rational actors" decide to drive their cars to the mall on Christmas Eve to do some last minute shopping. What kind of plausible economic decisions might people make in the immediate future?

As CNN is reporting, many people may move into the city. This makes perfect economic sense. Cities generally and New York particularly already have public transit infrastructure in place that is remarkably less expensive than automobile transportation. Think about the costs: an unlimited Metrocard in New York costs $81 a month. By contrast, filling up a ten gallon tank for a car that gets twenty miles to the gallon for thirty miles a day of driving (a conservative estimate that assumes you only drive to work and that work is no more than fifteen miles from your house) is $42 a week, or $168 a month. Add insurance payments, repairs/service/maintenance, and the capital investment in the car reflected in monthly payments, and you can easily spend $400 a month or more. If you already commute into a city (rather than to an office park) it makes sense to give up your sprawling McMansion and downsize to a more efficient and cost effective dwelling.

Here's the other side of the coin. Suburban apologists argue that real estate prices in New York City are quite high, even with the prospect that a recession might deflate real estate prices, and so you get more living space for your buck in the 'burbs. This is certainly true. A piece in the New York Times Real Estate section last Sunday titled, "They Love the (New) Brooklyn" featured The Mynt, an upscale building on the corner of Nostrand and Myrtle (across from the Marcy housing projects), which is typical of development in the last ten years. Starting in the late 90s young whites pushed the frontiers of gentrification beyond the borders of Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Real estate speculators weren't far behind, and soon in neighborhoods like Williamsburg they began constructing high rise apartment buildings that were almost as expensive as in Manhattan. A two bedroom in The Mynt goes for $2,550 a month, quite a bit more expensive than existing housing in the neighborhood. And at the moment the amenities that people want when they pay that much in rent are lacking in Bed-Stuy, which was one of the poorest places in America fifteen years ago. But will high prices deter immigration from the heart land?

Probably not. Ultimately high gas prices will be a more palpable and urgent motivator than more expensive square footage in the city. But the character of development won't be the same as it was during the go-go years of the last decade.

Though it may be the case that a depressed financial industry means apartments in Manhattan could slip below the $1.4 million average, it seems more likely that people moving to the city to escape the technology trap created in the sub- and ex-urbs by high gas prices will offset slackening demand. Moreover, real estate agents who see their country brethren losing their jobs are not going to be happy about lowering prices so that ex-suburbanites can maintain their standard of living. It is more likely that real estate owners will rent rather than sell, and subdivide rather than rent at a discount. Ghettoization in the 21st century may or may not be as racially motivated as it was during the Great Depression, but it will involve the inability of immigrants to the city to get mortgages, which in turn will lead to subdividing apartments in the new luxury buildings that sprang up in the last ten years, diverting them from luxury use to, you guessed it, new ghettos.

But the upside -- at least from the perspective of NYC residents -- will be pressure on Albany to approve more of Mayor Mike's green initiatives and urbanist policies that will soften the impact of extra population. Why? Because the 21st century immigrants who will be escaping the countryside with its prohibitively high cost of living, are people who already feel enfranchised and will be less likely to accept ghettoization as the price of citizenship. Congestion pricing, beefed up MTA service, and further expansion of bike friendly policies are important first steps to making city life more affordable, leaving residents more access to work and more money in their pockets. The next step will be to coordinate city planning and reign in the worst excesses of developers who are only interested in building high rises for Wall Street elites. Moreover, 21st century urbanist policy (policy necessarily comes from government) can encourage current residents of underdeveloped and neglected neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Brownsville and East New York to buy property to develop in an organic and market-friendly way.

A new synthesis in economics is in the air, one that accepts the fundamental tenets of Smith but understands how to coordinate individual economic decisions with government policy to promote a vibrant public sphere. Already real estate blogs disseminate vastly more information about market level opportunities to individuals than every before. The next step will be to organize citizens as a political community to make sure that growth is mutually beneficial and organic. Smith will once again triumph over Malthus if the city is allowed to develop into the logical alternative to the automobile era.

UPDATE!!!:

It looks like the NY Times is reading my blog. In this article Times reporter Peter Goodman reports that phase one of my prediction is coming to pass. He writes, "Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver schoolteachers, moved here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000. Last winter, they spent $3,000 on propane for heat, she said. Suddenly, this seemed like a place to flee." High fuel prices are the catalyst for moving people back to urban centers. (Ironically, it's not just the cost of commuting from the ex-urbs either. McMansions built for speed and not for durance cost more to heat, it seems, because they were built on the assumption of low heating fuel prices -- perhaps even in disdain for economic considerations like good insulation. Taken together, American's mid-twentieth century environmental carelessness is going to cause a lot of structural economic pain.) The really interesting part of the story is how deeply ingrained this kind of expensive living is in the popular imagination. Again, Goodman reports: "Megan Werner, 39, a mother of three, moved here five years ago from a dense suburb closer to Denver. She and her husband bought a home set on a 1.5-acre lot in the Deer Creek Farm subdivision. The space justified her husband’s 40-minute commute. 'We wanted more than a postage stamp,' she said, as her 5-year-old daughter walked barefoot across the driveway. It used to cost her about $30 to fill her Honda minivan with gas. Now, it is more like $50, and she coordinates her trips — shopping in town, combined with dance lessons for her children. But she has no thoughts of leaving. 'I can open up my door and my kids can play,' Ms. Werner said." I'll discuss this more in my next post.

Don't believe it?  Think that such innovative thinking, such a reverence for the past was more suited to Portland, Austin, or San Francisco?  Look again.  Better yet, check out the Downtown Voices Web site and scroll down to a June 9 entry that chronicles the success stories, the missed opportunities, and the great potential to redevelop older houses into restaurants and businesses, to transform industrial spaces and warehouses into studio apartments and art galleries.  It's a video collection of Phoenix "treasures" that will inspire you -- ones that you might even visit: Cibo, La Grande Orange, the Bentley galleries, Hotel Monroe, the Antique Store, and the Genesis charter school.

Even more significantly, city management and the Developmental Services Department officials seem to embrace the concept.  In recent years, we heard horror stories how code-enforcement, fire, and other regulators placed all kinds of requirements and roadblocks in the way of such developments.  But as if on cue, the market started rewarding those persistent entrepreneurs, now seen as visionary innovators.

The Phoenix City Council listened.  City staff took notice.  The community advocates, including Local First, Downtown Voices, and downtown artists echoed author Jane Jacobs' counsel: "New ideas must use old buildings."  City policies reflect the changing attitudes:

• A second development code, The International Existing Building Code, geared for older buildings, offers some practical relief on renovations while maintaining public safety.
• Creation of an Office of Customer Advocacy to help small businesses confused by the regulatory process.
• Participation directly in the Downtown Artist Issues Task Force.
• Appointed a 21-member Adaptive Reuse Task Force with representatives from the city manager's office, the City Council and several city departments. The task force will develop comprehensive recommendations by this fall. It might borrow from successful policies used in Denver, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

This newfound interest down at City Hall about incorporating old buildings into new uses?  The adaptive reuse of existing space for new businesses?  It's not just lip service.

Road pricing is back in the news as Metrolinx tries to fund transit improvements in the GTA. On the table are expressway tolls of 10 cents per kilometre. This would, according to the Globe and Mail, mean a one-way toll of $3.60 to get from Oakville to downtown Toronto.

This is a pretty good deal for motorists; GO riders pay $6.00 for the same trip.

While recognizing this is a good idea, we should hold off on implementing some or all of the tolls until certain significant improvements are made to transit. I know this is a chicken-and-egg problem, but the Yonge subway is at capacity during rush hour and GO has serious trouble arriving on-time. If we can't fit people on the trains or get the trains to run on time it isn't fair to punish them for hitting the highway.

And since we're talking about road pricing, why not tolls on most of the 400-series highways? Ten cents per kilometre gets very pricey very quickly, but we might consider something similar to the New York State Thruway. Accordingly to my (shaky grasp of) math, it costs about 2.5 cents per kilometre between Buffalo and Albany. Applied to the length of the 401, a journey from Detroit to Montreal would set drivers back about $20. It isn't a lot of money, but it is a reminder that driving has costs. You may not have to buy more gas when you get on the 401, but you always pay a small toll.

Gas taxes encourage people to use gasoline sparingly which is a worthy goal in this age of climate change. Getting people to leave their car - Hummer or Prius - at home is a part of that, but setting aside inconvenient truths, fewer cars on the road has independent merit. It isn't healthy to spend hours on the road commuting between or across cities. Cars turn people into monsters. Highways destroy neighbourhoods.

The financial and psychological impacts of road pricing make it a useful tool for combating climate change, urban sprawl, and low standards of living.

[photo] "Toll booths" by vagrantant

Construction on the fountain in Washington Square Park continues. It is being moved some feet to the right to make its center align with the arch and fifth avenue. To know more about the controversy behind the "redesign" of the park check out Washington Square Park blog.

The park's history is the struggle of American urbanization writ small. Since the time of Robert Moses, anti-urbanists have tried to break it up or privatize it. Moses succeeded in extending 5th Ave. through it, and wanted to widen LaGuardia place to make it a thoroughfare, but Jane Jacobs and Shirley Hayes blocked the plan. The street was closed and Moses, who is legendary for bulldozing over neighborhood residents' objections, was successfully checked for the first time. Ric Burns's New York documentary is also a great place to learn more about Moses and the anti-urbanists.

Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences website

As I had mentioned in previous post, the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences is having their national congress in town at the various UBC campuses around town. I want to highlight the one I'm really interested in (but which I unfortunately will miss).

12:15 TO 13:20, WOODWARD (IRC), THEATRE 2

Research in Society: Richard Florida “Who's Your City?”

Richard Florida is one of the world’s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. Currently Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Florida has held professorships at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. He is a former senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. Florida earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Through his work, he provides unique, data-driven insight into the social, economic and demographic factors that drive the 21st-century world economy.

He is more of an economist and deals mainly with demographics and statistical trends, but it would be interesting to see what he has to say about cities in general. An excerpt from Randy Shore's Vancouver Sun article that I had referenced before shows that Richard Florida has some similar ideas to Jane Jacobs.

Florida is launching a book called Who's Your City? in which he explores the idea that cities, rather than nations, are the drivers of the new knowledge-based economy. Florida says that choosing where to live is as important to our lives, our happiness and fulfilment as choosing a job or a mate.

Florida's view outline above is very similar to what Jane Jacobs has written before in two of her books: The Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations. I've only had the opportunity to read the latter. So Florida may be building upon part of Jacobs previous arguments in her books.

There is a follow up lecture in the evening at UBC Robson Square:

18:00 TO 20:00, HSBC HALL, ROBSON SQUARE CAMPUS

“The Role of Culture in the Global Urban Economy”

In a global economy where the MFA is the new MBA, this panel considers Richard Florida’s notion of the creative class and what it will mean for the role of culture in our cities. The panel will include academics, authors, gallerists, artists, and city representatives; copies of Florida’s latest book, Who’s Your City?, will be available at special Congress price; presented in conjunction with UBC Alumni Affairs.

Actually, it's more of a discussion than a lecture that will build upon some of the ideas that Florida will have presented earlier in the day. This is the lecture that is outside of my working hours and which I'll be able to attend. I just wish I had taken the day off, but it's too late now.

If anyone is interested in attending these lectures, you can purchase a Community Participant Day Pass at the Student Union Building (SUB) at UBC. It's $15 and gives you access to a select number of lectures and displays on campus.

Name: Barefoot Coffee Roasters
Location: 5237 Stevens Creek Blvd, Santa Clara, CA
Rating: 4

I've written about Barefoot's coffee at a cafe, at home, and at the 2008 WRBC, yet I'm embarrassed to say that, until now, I've never been to the Barefoot mothership. Fortunately, fate has a way of shining from time to time, and travelling for work also helps. This time, I found myself just a short hop away from Barefoot's cafe and wanted to impress my out-of-town colleague with some of the bay area's finest. I had laid the groundwork for our trip buy guiding him and another colleague up to Temple Coffee (which uses Barefoot) a couple of days before. He had liked that coffee and was more than willing check out the roastery.

Of course, I did have some reservations. Not so much about the coffee, although I did worry that it might not live up to my expectations. My concerns were mostly about the overall sense of design. The chairs seemed to have something funky going on with them even if recently cleaned. The photographs of mismatched furniture smacked of dirty mission cafe design. And the fact that Barefoot is located in a strip mall pretty much sealed the deal for disappointment.

Fortunately, Barefoot has done an amazing job of making lemonade out of a strip mall location. The outdoor seating takes full advantage of the South Bay's sunnier weather and barely seems as though it's resting on a peninsula of concrete jutting out into a parking lot.

The inside of the cafe possesses the kind of rich, density of activity that would make Jane Jacobs proud. The seating, while not aesthetically pleasing and crammed into a tiny space is artfully arranged to create an illusion of comfort and connection. One end of the counter supports Barefoot's three-group LaMarzocco surrounded by framed certificates noting the training completed by its baristas. The other end of the counter (separated by the pastry case) is home base for: the cashier; the urns of drip (on my visit, two regular and one decaf); a full drink menu; placards describing the rotating and single-origin espressos; and several wall-mounted posters describing all of Barefoot's coffees, their roast levels and any other coffee information you might possibly want to know. One full wall was packed with a photographic exhibition and the other held shelves of freshly roasted beans, mostly sealed one-way valve paper bags with a few (the fancier Cup of Excellence stuff) stored in one-way valve-fitted aluminum tins. Oh, and tucked away in the back is still the roaster which will soon move to a new location.

On my first day, I ordered the Ethiopian Ghimbi Wollega single origin espresso. Unfortunately, my time turned out to be far too short and the wait time for this coffee far too long. I asked whether I could get it in paper. Barefoot - to their credit - stuck to their guns and refused. I suppose it wouldn't have made a difference since the real delay was the long line and the coffee prep time (not the drinking), but I couldn't help feel but a little miffed at their rigidity as well as the curt response. I'm usually the one advocating for ceramic so I understand their thinking, but I think an explanation would be useful for the typical customer.

All's well that ends well I suppose. I canceled my order and got a cup of one of Barefoot's multiple Finca Vista Hermosa Guatemalans. This time it was the Vista Hermosa, which many of you might know of because of the tragic tale behind it or simply because of the high marks it received on Coffee Review. This coffee was a far better cup than the El Eden I had tried at home a while back. It was very well-balanced despite its complexity: lots of bright citrus, tobacco and chocolate and several less identifiable notes in between (that I didn't have time to savor or note properly).

My second day back, I finally got to order that Ghimbi. It certainly was one of the more amazingly complex and intriguing espressos I've had in a while. I suppose the jury is out as to whether I really liked it, but I'd certainly drink it again in minute. It had a very bright start, - meyer lemon - moving into a savory, crisp, zingy middle - celery and white pepper - and rounding things out with a sweet finish - summer melon and just a touch of blackberry. What's just as amazing about this coffee was that it had virtually no aftertaste.

I was impressed enough to stop back that afternoon before heading home. I ordered the Element 114 blend. It's not your typical espresso, but a bit closer to the norm than the Ghimbi. This delicious espresso had a bright lemony citrus followed up by a deep rich, bold undertone of molasses and caramel. It was more oakey and not as sweet as the Ghimbi and also had a stronger (and not entirely pleasant) tobacco aftertaste.

All in all, Barefoot seems a little like their coffee. They are frenetic, complicated, a little eccentric and slightly scattered. Yet somehow they manage to pull all the loose threads together into a cohesive, award-winning and genuinely delicious product.

The Rockefeller Foundation created the award in 2007 to, "recognize visionary work in building a more diverse, dynamic and equitable city through creative uses of the urban environment. " Shepard will receive the Medal for Lifetime Leadership. She co-founded WeACT in 1988, and since then has worked on issues of environmental justice in the Harlem community. Torres-Fleming will receive the Medal for New Ideas and Activism. She has been an activist for the South Bronx since 1992, and founded YMPJ in 1994. YMPJ works to empower youth through faith, activism, arts, education/tutoring, health, and community-based planning. Each will receive $100,000. The Medals will be awarded at a ceremony on September 8th at the Morgan Library.

Our walk was bright and early Saturday morning. They said they had over 70 people registered, but only about 25-30 showed up – but it was early and kind of cold and gloomy. The people who took part were obviously all urban pedestrian types, so Chris Bradshaw was pretty much preaching to the converted when he pointed out things like crosswalks that are too large or the dangers of slopey sidewalks.

I had hoped to see some City types out as well. If I was an urban planner or something for the city this would have been a great way to really see the city and meet and talk with actual people that live in the city. Maybe they all went to the afternoon things?

Anyway, Ottawa’s a long way from what I would consider a walkable city. Parts of the downtown core aren’t too bad -- the areas with low rise buildings, mixed commercial/residential, narrow streets, lots of intersections (e.g.: Bank/Elgin/Somerset). The market area would be really good if they made a nice big chunk of it pedestrian only. Cars weaving among the outdoor patios, market stalls, shoppers and buskers is unnecessary, dangerous and just takes away from the whole experience.

Dining alfresco, while two feet away an SUV is pumping exhaust into your face is unpleasant. On the other side of the coin, why motorists would even want to join in that market traffic snarl is beyond me.

Outside of the downtown core, there is little encouragement in the infrastructure for walking as a form of transportation – urban sprawl in all its glory. Perfunctory sidewalks that suddenly end, highway on and off ramps with no concessions for pedestrians, too many 4+ lane streets with crosswalks that are too wide, no buffers between traffic and sidewalks, walkways that remain snow covered in winter and flooded when it rains, et., etc.

I could go on and on. There are many visionaries like Jane Jacobs who know what it takes for a city to be alive and vital. We have all sorts of fine examples of thriving, walkable cities all over the world. Ottawa even had/has a Pedestrian Plan that’s been dragging on for years.

Ottawa certainly does a lot of planning.

arte: syd mead

Abril já acabou, mas fica aqui uma frase da "urbanista e sonhadora de cidades", Jane Jacobs, falecida em abril de 2006:

"Ninguém será capaz de dizer o que irá funcionar em uma cidade só olhando para cidades-jardim de subúrbio, manipulando maquetes ou inventando cidades de sonho. É preciso sair e caminhar."

Quem sabe nossos planejadores urbanos também não descobrem que maquetes, contas e estatísticas jamais substituirão a realidade de uma boa caminhada.

Descoberto através do Bike Lane Diary.

I have made the point before that we are entering an Interregnum, that pause between eras when the old king of neo-conservatism is dead, but the new king has not been named. This afternoon, the Wall Street Journal nailed up another signpost. The headline reads--Has the Financial Industry's Heyday Come and Gone?

For the past three decades, finance has claimed a growing share of the U.S. stock market, profits and the overall economy.

But the role of finance -- the businesses of borrowing, lending, investing and all the middlemen in between -- may be ebbing, a shift that would redefine the U.S. economy. "The role of finance in the economy is going to come down significantly in the coming years," says Carlos Asilis, chief investment officer at Glovista Investments, a New Jersey money manager. "From a societal standpoint, we got carried away with finance."

Jane Jacobs, one of our greatest critics, wrote in Systems of Survival that two value systems are struggling for our souls. As Christopher Knight describes it.

Two distinct ethical systems govern human behavior, Jacobs proposed. When they collide -- as they have lately on a grand scale in Washington, Philadelphia and Boston/Las Vegas -- a monstrous hybrid is born.

One system she called guardian culture. Guardians protect. They work in the military and police, government legislatures and courts, churches and schools. They work in art museums too, where they protect our collective artistic patrimony. Guardians have no profit motive.

The other system is commercial culture, where profit is the aim. Elements of guardian behavior are displayed by all animals, but commercial culture is novel. Trade and the production of goods are uniquely human endeavors.

The book has the virtue of neither demonizing commerce nor glorifying guardians. Each is simply what it is. Both are essential. And when they follow their intrinsic ethical guidelines, they help societies prosper.

What's good for the guardian is generally bad for the commercial order, Jacobs wrote, and vice versa. Each system claims a discrete -- and contradictory -- ethical system.

When commercial culture operates according to guardian morality, or when guardians adopt commercial ethics, all hell breaks loose. Conflicts erupt. Decadence follows.

Obviously the two cultures have coexisted but often clashed as when Jesus throws the moneychangers out of the Temple or when Eisenhower warned us that the Military Industrial Complex would compromise our democracy. These dichotomies are even evident in arguments about open source software.

I've long maintained in my free and open source software talks that we have understood communities since "you had a campfire and I wanted to sit beside it."  That metaphorical campfire perfectly frames the value systems debate as well.  Am I allowed to sit beside the fire because you're acting as protector (guardian)?  (And when will you begin to tax me firewood?)  Or did I trade to sit beside the campfire.

Obviously the Trading culture has dominated the Political (guardian) culture since the early 50's as the World War II guardian culture dominance subsided. If the Wall Street Journal is right in picking this moment when the power of the trading culture begins to wane--then we are in an Interregnum. What would the reassertion of Guardian Culture look like? Could it be a kind of Fortress America strategy, where we make sure our own needs for security,education, food, energy and manufactured goods are met either internally or from close alliances (maybe defined by our hemisphere)? In that world, we would pull back our troops from the thousands of foreign bases and openly trade our surpluses.

So the trading culture would not go away and could continue to grow. But it would no longer be in control of the political culture. I'm not sure how this will play out, but I sense that we are at a moment of change.

 I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Hillier presents a theory of urban emergence founded upon two ideas. First, that circulation in a city is determined by the configuration of lines into a global hierarchy of depth, which he calls integration. Second, that activities in the city adapt to take maximum advantage of this movement, a phenomenon he calls a "movement economy."

How did he draw this conclusion? By observing that integration of lines could predict where all the major shopping streets in London are.

Which then is primary? Let us argue this through the spatial distribution of retail, the commonest non-residential land use. We may already have been suspected of having confused the effects of spatial configuration on movement with the effect of shops. Are not the shops the main attractors of movement? And do they not lie on the main integrators? This is of course true. But it does not undermine what is being said about the structure of the grid as the prime determinant of movement. On the contrary it makes the argument far more powerful. Both the shops and the people are found on main integrators, but the question is: why are the shops there? The presence of shops can attract people but they cannot change the integration value of a line, since this is purely a spatial measure of the position of the line in the grid. It can only be that the shops were selectively located on integrating lines, and this must be because they are the lines which naturally carry the most movement. So, far from explaining away the relation between grid structure and movement by pointing to the shops, we have explained the location
of the shops by pointing to the relation between grid and movement. (SITM 125)

Once it has been demonstrated that it is the global network structure that determines where most of the movement will go, not any particular destination, then what remains to do is to exploit this movement. This is the movement economy. It is, in one sense or another, behind every act of urbanism, operating at every scale.

Every trip in an urban system has three elements: an origin, a destination, and the series of spaces that are passed through on the way from one to the other. We can think of passage through these spaces as the by-product of going from a to b. We already know that this byproduct, when taken at the aggregate level, is determined by the structure of the grid, even if the location of all the a’s and b’s is not.

Location in the grid therefore has a crucial effect. It either increases or diminishes the degree to which movement by-product is available as potential contact. As we saw in the coloured-up maps, this applies not only to individual lines, but to the groups of lines that make up local areas. Thus there will be more integrating and less integrating areas, depending on how the internal structure of the area is married into the larger-scale structure of the grid, and this will mean also areas with more by-product and areas with less.

Now if cities are, as they were always said to be, ‘mechanisms for generating contact’, then this means that some locations have more potential than others because they have more by-product and this will depend on the structure of the grid and how they relate to it. Such locations will therefore tend to have higher densities of development to take advantage of this, and higher densities will in turn have a multiplier effect. This will in turn attract new buildings and uses, to take advantage of the multiplier effect. It is this positive feedback loop built on a foundation of the relation between the grid structure and movement this gives rise to the urban buzz, which we prefer to be romantic or mystical about, but which arises from the co-incidence in certain locations of large numbers of different activities involving people going about their business in different ways. (SITM 126)

From this knowledge, we can arrive at a paradigmatic definition of urbanity. A space can be considered urban if it makes maximum economy of the movement that passes through it. A city, at any scale, will be qualified as a good city if the experience of movement is not felt as a burden but as an opportunity and pleasure.

A visitor from Canada once remarked to me that he had walked from the Eiffel tower to the Pantheon, a trip of more than 4 kilometers, without feeling the distance. This is something he could never have done back home, where inevitably one would run into long stretches of mind-numbing repetition or parking lots. Paris, on the other hand, offered him a path through the city that was rewarding his presence. Certainly the excellent late 19th-century residential architecture plays a role in creating a basic comfort level, but architecture alone does not distract for such a long distance.

Paris is known as a city of highly sophisticated urbanity, and this is attributable to the efficient movement economy that was seeded there during the Haussmannian period. The most integrated lines, the typical boulevards and avenues, have been constructed in such a way that they make maximum use of residual movement. And what may be most surprising, a revelation that the occasional tourist will miss out on, is that the least integrated lines, the common residential streets, are generally quite boring, bordering on unpleasant. They are rarely seen by anyone except their residents due to their spatial segregation. It is safe to say, then, that the "real" Paris, what makes the city worth visiting, are its highly integrated spaces.

How do these spaces realize movement economies? Firstly they provide multiple scales of movement as well as the interfaces between those scales of movement. The grand avenues centered on the Arc de Triomphe are in fact three different scales of movement: promenade, street and highway, connecting into each other. While someone crossing the city in an automobile would be exposed to all the activity taking place on the promenades, he could decide to pull over into the street section, curb-separated from the highway section, and park his car in an available spot, then walk to his chosen destination. While walking there, he encounters shops he could stop in if it occurred to him to make a purchase. Restaurants and fast-food outlets provide him with a convenient option for dining. On the street side, news kiosks offer him information and headlines. All of this benefits him and occupies his mind at no cost as he was already taking this path for other reasons.

While he is walking to his destination, people are sitting in sidewalk terraces drinking beer and coffee, watching him walk by. They are also taking advantage of movement. William H. Whyte, author of the classic The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, observed that the primary activity that takes place in plazas is people-watching, people moving through that is. On the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the most trafficked in the city, restaurants have outdoor dining rooms right between the highway and the pedestrian flow. They are highly prized, despite the noise and wind, because people enjoy watching the movement.

Since Alphand, the city of Paris has split promenades into three strips. The center strip is the open space through which pedestrians walk. The street-side strip is for street furniture such as kiosks, public washrooms, benches, bus stops, and so on. The building-side strip is for "concessionaires", retailers and restaurants renting a part of the street to open their space to the exterior. The formula for a good promenade is that simple.

Needless to say, it takes quite a lot of movement to support so many mutually-dependent activities. But high-end avenues are not the only spaces that can take advantage of movement economies. Urban movement is fractal (it occurs at all scales). Hillier found that placing a limit on the range of movement, one obtained a local integration map that was different than the global integration map, and the movement in this locally integrated space was qualitatively different than global movement. These locally integrated paths develop local movement economies of their own. Typically, while highly integrated paths will become high-end shopping streets, locally integrated paths will be neighborhood service streets. Instead of trendy restaurants, fashion boutiques and cinemas, you find supermarkets, bakeries, post offices and cafes. And when we look at things with enough abstraction, we can see that even a shopping mall is a form of locally-integrated movement economy, where anchors terminate important axis and boutiques support each other by intercepting movement. Kiosks and cafes now take up even more space in the center of shopping mall promenades than they do in Parisian boulevards. It should be no surprise that people who live in suburban cities reflexively head to the mall for activity. Shopping malls, in the suburbs, have the most densely developed movement economies!

Besides creating commercial potential, movement economies also provide security. This is something that Jane Jacobs insisted on in Death and Life of Great American Cities through her concept of eyes on the street, but Hillier found an inverse statistical correlation between burglaries and spatial integration. What this brings us to is that there is a lower bound to urbanity, that we have defined as the realization of movement economies, where spaces lose integration and become segregated. If there is not enough movement, there is no purpose to public space. This is the point where public space becomes pathological, and where "defensible space" becomes necessary. Disastrous social housing projects have become the textbook case for failed public space, and their segregation explains their pathologies.

Parisian urbanism offers another excellent solution out of this problem. While the avenues are congested and noisy, full of life and activity, the lots are organized as courtyards from which several buildings are accessible. These courtyards are locked behind digitally-secured coach doors. It is rarely the case that one is invited to a dinner party without being given several "digicodes" to get through the secured, segregated spaces. Once in the courtyard, the noisy street becomes peaceful silence. These courtyards are functionally identical to the despised suburban cul-de-sac. But the cul-de-sac is not the problem, the streets they connect to are the problem. Paris balances two extremes, highly public, highly integrated space and completely private, gated space, side-by-side, supporting each other. Manhattan's street-and-skyscraper urbanism is essentially the same, except that instead of going deep away from the street, one has to go up after entering segregated space.

New Urbanists in America and compact city advocates in Europe insist on having fully open grids, sometimes with alleys, instead of cul-de-sacs. There is nothing wrong with a cul-de-sac in itself; it is only a large residential building turned on its side. The important work is creating density in highly integrated lines. Arturo Soria y Mata invented the linear city in the 19th century as a utopia, but in reality, all cities are linear cities, functioning at fractal scales. The realization that the spatial integrity of the line is more important than anything that goes on behind the buildings occurred to me while taking a bus through the west Paris city of Nanterre, widely acknowledged to be a wasteland. The line the bus was taking was well composed, and I did not realize where I was until I caught a glimpse of wasteland Nanterre in a gap between two buildings. So far as anyone on that street was concerned, this didn't affect them negatively. That is how resilient urban fabric can be.

Afterword

From Space is the Machine, global and local integration maps of Central London.

Self-organization of cities around natural movement is an important demonstration of complexity. Without anyone having willed or designed it that way, the aggregate actions of the millions of residents of London, all randomly travelling from one point to another of the network, resulted in the production of a fractal structure of the urban grid.

References

Bill Hillier. Space is the Machine
New Science. New Urbanism. New Architecture - Proceedings from a London conference, Katarxis.

This is, for instance, at the core of much of the sheer, unadulterated emotion that surrounds the party leaders. (I wanted to originally type "hatred" but thought better of it.)

If, for instance, you believe that fixing the ills of society is part of the role of government — that, indeed, this is the unique agency that can do so — then you are likely to have a visceral reaction against any politician who goes on the record as saying the role of government should be limited. Thus, we get the "Harper must be defeated" crowd seizing upon every passing day's news to make their point: the Prime Minister has acted on his beliefs and chained (to some extent) the Federal Government's ability to meddle in new program areas, any of which could qualify as an ill to be fixed. The belief then drives the reaction.

Some of my own beliefs, of course, leaked out there (just as they do in the rest of my political writing): I don't believe that every issues requires government intervention, and thus am quite comfortable with the thought of limited government, even if those "ills" are not ameliorated.

It would nice, I suppose, to live in Galt's Gulch (Ayn Rand's depiction of a society of purely rational interactions between people in Atlas Shruged — she portrayed it as a situation where a laissez-faire society still protected the commonweal) but the philosopher in me is acutely aware that man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one. Far more accurate, then, is Jane Jacobs' portrayal of the situation in her Systems of Survival, where she teases apart what she calls the "commercial code" (that which is closest to the libertarian ideal) and the "guardian code" (that of government as the guardian of all things). The real world, of course, is a constant tug-of-war between these two codes: even under the darkest days of Stalinism some elements of the commercial code were still in play, and, of course, a purely libertarian code has never been tried, despite the claims that it has.

In the real world, therefore, beyond the basics of a legal code, policing and military protection of the citizens, and a judicial system, it is necessary for government to intervene to deal with matters of the commons. There are many "tragedy of the commons" issues that sometimes require a little carefully focused regulation, or the creation of an apparently commercial yet mandatory system to intervene and redirect behaviour which is advantageous to the individual but destructive of society in general. Recent concerns over pollution, global warming and environmental destruction fall into this camp. Creating and requiring the use of a carbon credit system, or a carbon taxing system, and a set of regulations about discharge (for water, I particularly like the notion that your intake must be downstream from your outflow [now you figure out how clean you want to make it, and how]) are examples of a little guardianship over shared resources. So, too, does the concept of zoning: carried to the suburban extreme it becomes the agent of environmental and societal destruction, but it is appropriate to ensure a rendering plant or mini mill can't be erected in my neighbour's back yard on my residential street. These are two examples — there are others we can think of — that protect the commonweal and thus make for reasonable restrictions on free action in society.

Incidentally, to those who say in return that a purely commercial set of alternatives to work this out could be devised, I say "yes, rationally they could, but man is a rationalizing animal, always ready to find an excuse not to do the right thing for all of us if it inconveniences him personally".

There are other kinds of intervention that may be more problematic. Do we, for instance, benefit from — or lose by — requirements for Canadian ownership of certain industries, Canadian content on our airwaves, and the like? If you believe, as I do, that there is value in Canadian identity, then actions to preserve a space for Canadians to shape that identity culturally make sense, although, as with many things, they ought not to take on a life of their own: we should periodically challenge them if only to ensure they are still a net benefit. This is the challenge of being a smallish nation (by numbers and economic clout) next door to a large and civilisationally-dominant one, where it is almost always easier to simply "buy their choices" than pay the premium for developing our own. But each such intervention in Canadians' freedom to choose must be carefully examined. Other interventions include the public building of national infrastructure: it may be necessary, with our surfeit of near-empty geography, to give such infrastructure a boost into existence and early operation through the public sector, but, as growth takes over, moving these into the private sector then makes sense: the resulting institutions can stand on their own (and should, say I). Remember, the world's largest railway is now Canadian National — and it is so via its choices to buy American lines from their former owners and use their expertise to improve the service offered on them.

There are other areas which are almost never (in my view) appropriate for government involvement. Those who believe in government as the saving grace of society will disagree with this position. We should not be creating and fostering dependency in the First Nations. We should not be building a national day care system. We should not be force-feeding "innovation" as a set of market distortions: those that can play the grant and loan application game get funding; those that play by commercial rules fall behind. My reasons are philosophic: the government that governs best does so by focusing its attentions. None of these are essential interventions: they are all in the "pet project" category.

And every one of these restricts Canadians' choices, limits their horizons, eats into their possibilities, more than it does good. They are, in other words, a net loss — and always will be.

Finally, it is important to remember that we have also established, at the core of our governance, some key rules — we call them our Constitution. In there is a division of labour amongst our governments. It is therefore proper for each government to function only within its domains. Provinces with grand ambitions ought not to simply assume the Federal Government owes them the difference. The Federal Government, in its eternal quest to remain relevant to Canadians (after all, all the interesting things from a citizen's point of view are municipal or provincial according to our Constitution), needs to avoid meddling in the affairs of the provinces. Will this mean some provinces might have better services than others? Yes. The whole point of provinces, at the end of the day, is to celebrate difference. This one believes in far more government: let it. This one chooses a more libertarian outlook: let it. Citizens will make their own choices about where to live based on their preferred balance between liberty and governance. This is as it should be: the commercial and guardian codes are always tipping out of balance in their engagement and overlap with one another, and no jurisdiction's current approach remains "right" for long. Yet all can stay within one nation, with all the benefits that provides.

Compared to those who would use government to enforce a particular view of economic life, or of social mores, upon the population, I side with liberty. Compared to pure libertarians, I recognise the imperfection of man (and his inherent imperfectibility) and recognise a need for some government. Add to this the notion that change should be made slowly and with a keen eye on our traditions — what makes us, us — and there you have my Tory political philosophy. Certainly not Conservative (although there is much common cause there), Green (but not to the point of Social Engineering), with the sense of social justice that is the old CCF strain in the NDP (prairie NDP, if you will) but tempered by always challenging guardianship. Not at all opportunistic as the Liberals tend to be, championing interventions for short-term reasons.

The current government has many failings, but, of all the parties on offer as they are today, it is the least worst option. That is my answer to my commenter of a few days ago.

In 1961, Jane Jacobs released The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jane Jacobs had already made a name for herself as a community activist in the West Village.

At one point, the Washington Square Park Arch had cars running around - and through - it. Jacobs was involved with others in ending this. (See photo: Arch from 1955. Note cars.)

In her groundbreaking book on how we view planning of cities, she writes of NYC's recurring plans to play around with Washington Square Park: "The city officials regularly concoct improvement schemes by which this center within the park would be sown to grass and flowers and surrounded by a fence. The invariable phrase to describe this is, 'restoring the land to park use.' That is a different form of park use, legitimate in places. But for neighborhood parks, the finest centers are stage settings for people."

Forty seven years later, the city is bent on destroying Jacobs' vision of what makes a successful public park.

Actually, as it stands I quite enjoy my neighbourhood of Toronto. I can walk to every manner of store, a few good restaurants, and a big park. Toronto is certainly not without its problems, and yet one of the things that it does well is retain a sense of neighbourhood, especially in the downtown area. I have no idea how we accomplished this - but first Jane Jacobs and now Richard Florida - two high-profile Americans writing about urban environments - have moved here from the US to experience what Toronto apparently does well.

Does Toronto's retained sense of community make it a more livable city? Certainly in terms of per capita murders we rank fairly well, even compared to smaller cities. The place where I worry about a loss of community isn't in downtown Toronto, nor is it in small, farming communities. Where I worry about this phenomenon is in the vast tracts of land developed into sprawling exurbs around cities. When I drive through the Costco badlands of Maple or Markham or Mississauga I get a palpable sense of isolation - especially when I try to imagine life there without a car.

Is this just the confused gaze of a snobbish outsider? You might say so, but I did grow up in what you might call an inner suburb, so it isn't as though I speak without experience.

Last year's winners were: Barry Benepe, founder of Greenmarket, for Lifetime Leadership; and Omar Freilla, founder of Green Worker Cooperatives, for New Ideas and Activism.

Read more about the history of the Medal and its requirements after the jump.

The Jane Jacobs Medal was created by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2007 to honor activist, author and urbanist, Jane Jacobs, who died in April 2006 at the age of 89. The Foundation’s relationship with Jane Jacobs dates back to the 1950s, when it launched an Urban Design Studies program that helped foster the emergence of the new discipline of urban design and theory. As part of this initiative, one of the Foundation’s first grants was to the then-obscure writer from Greenwich Village, for the research and writing of her seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The awarding of the inaugural Jane Jacobs Medals in September 2007 coincided with the opening of Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. A partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Municipal Art Society.

According the Foundation's website, recipients of the Medal should exemplify the following values and ideas:

• Make New York City a place of hope and expectation that attracts new people and new ideas
• Challenge traditional assumptions and conventional thinking
• Promote dynamism, density, diversity and equity
• Generate new principles for the way we think about development and preservation in New York City
• Take a common sense approach to complex problems
• Provide leadership in solving common problemsRespect neighborhood knowledge
• Generate creative use of the urban environment
• Demonstrate activism and innovative cross-disciplinary thinking
• Give us new ways of seeing and understanding our city

... our most memorable Massey lectures. This week, the opening lecture from urbanist, writer and activist Jane Jacobs. Said to be an 'intellectual warrior', her series was called 'Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association'. She presented it in 1979.

Past Podcasts | Podcasts | CBC Radio

MP3

Whenever I read Jane Jacobs, I'm always left wondering: Sure, here are practical, obvious, street-smart explanations for why some cities and some neighborhoods do better than others -- but aren't greater social and economic factors (racial prejudice, poverty, market forces, etc) more important than the size of the blocks?  I doubt that the 'best' Jane Jacobs neighborhoods could have been saved from the 'white-flight', social and fiscal disinvestment, and drug problems that plagued most US cities in the 70's and 80's.  On the flip side, the most uninviting, super-block, border-zone, no-amenity neighborhoods in today's hyper investment era NYC are a hive of activity and development as population and income rise in the city of today.  Are the forces that Jane Jacobs identifies really contributing to that much to the rise and fall of cities and neighborhoods or are other factors more to blame?

And, is there anything that can be done to 'save' or improve a neighborhood or city that is in trouble?  Can the forces that Jacobs identifies as coinciding with healthy urban life be truly created, or are they just observable in already successful areas? 

Does our MAS community of planners/architects/activists/builders have examples where the principals of Death and Life have been put into practice, either with success or without?  Does Jane work?