{"id":1997,"date":"2011-04-25T23:51:48","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T03:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2011-04-25T23:51:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T03:51:48","slug":"how-jane-jacobs-killed-city-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2011\/04\/25\/how-jane-jacobs-killed-city-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"How Jane Jacobs killed city planning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/deathlifegreatuscities.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1999\" title=\"deathlifegreatuscities\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/deathlifegreatuscities.jpg?resize=208%2C300\" alt=\"deathlifegreatuscities\" width=\"208\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I ran across this <a href=\"http:\/\/places.designobserver.com\/feature\/jane-jacobs-and-the-death-and-life-of-american-planning\/25188\/\" target=\"_blank\">excellent piece<\/a> from Thomas Campanella in Design Observer, discussing the deadly impact of Jane Jacobs on the planning profession.\u00a0 Campanella is a <a href=\"http:\/\/planning.unc.edu\/people\/faculty\/thomascampanella\" target=\"_blank\">professor of planning<\/a> at UNC-Chapel Hill&#8217;s Department of City and Regional Planning.\u00a0 I share it because I&#8217;ve encountered many of the same issues in my relatively brief time in the profession.\u00a0 An excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And all along I kept wondering: Why did this have to come out of a coffee shop and a classroom?<em> Where were the planners?<\/em> Why didn\u2019t the town or county planning office act on this opportunity? A  moment ago I argued that the public lacks the knowledge and expertise  to make informed decisions about planning. If that&#8217;s the case, what does  it say about our profession when a group of citizens \u2014 most with no  training in architecture, planning or design \u2014 comes up with a very good  idea <em>that the planners should have had<\/em>? When I asked about  this, the response was: &#8220;We\u2019re too busy planning to come up with big  plans.&#8221; Too busy planning. Too busy slogging through the  bureaucratic maze, issuing permits and enforcing zoning codes, hosting  community get-togethers, making sure developers get their submittals in  on time and pay their fees. This is what passes for planning today. We  have become a caretaker profession \u2014 reactive rather than proactive,  corrective instead of preemptive, rule bound and hamstrung and anything  but visionary. If we lived in Nirvana, this would be fine. But we don&#8217;t.  We are entering the uncharted waters of global urbanization on a scale  never seen. And we are not in the wheelhouse, let alone steering the  ship. We may not even be on board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lots of interesting stuff to chew on in the piece. I will say that vision isn&#8217;t in short supply amongst individual planners &#8211; from directors down to new staff &#8211; but articulating that vision within planning&#8217;s narrowed authority can be difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone in the field (or observing it from afar) should give it a read.\u00a0 I&#8217;m curious to hear what others think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ran across this excellent piece from Thomas Campanella in Design Observer, discussing the deadly impact of Jane Jacobs on the planning profession.\u00a0 Campanella is a professor of planning at UNC-Chapel Hill&#8217;s Department of City and Regional Planning.\u00a0 I share it because I&#8217;ve encountered many of the same issues in my relatively brief time in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[314,485],"class_list":["post-1997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jane-jacobs","tag-planning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-wd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2004,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/2004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}