Beyond Jacobs

We had a bit of a debate this morning over yesterday's Ouroussoff NYTimes article about the East River waterfront proposal. There are some who go back to the (now) tired old argument that design critics are too aesthetically-driven, leaving the function and use of the space untended to. OK, we've heard that song before. The rest of us (me included) were simply puzzled by Ouroussoff's writing.

Let's really think about this: isn't Ouroussoff setting up a false truth? A Jacobian legacy doesn't immediately connote sentimentality and nostalgia. She was an activist in her day, and she didn't necessarily prefer one design to another. Mostly, she worried that neighborhoods were not being thought about with the lense of people and the attendent uses, comfort, sociability, etc were being forgone in the name of what her opponents called "modern."

What Ouroussoff wrote in complimenting the proposal was completely in line with Jacobs:

"Even as it celebrates the city's underbelly, it weaves it into the surrounding neighborhoods with remarkable sensitivity. The plan shows how a series of small interventions, when thoughtfully conceived, can have a more meaningful impact on daily life than an unwieldy urban development scheme."

If Ourossoff wanted people to stop paying attention to sentimentality, why continue to evoke an outdated notion about Jacobs? Come on - of course young designers have innovative ideas about what it takes to make a city great, and they're best suited to come up with small interventions rather than large civic projects. After all, they're used to making a lot out of not very much at all.

Jacobs ideas were about innovation and change, not accepting the status quo destruction that was so quickly happening around her. We can continue to live that legacy of embracing change and imbue that mentality with a humanist perspective, only we've got to move beyond the false duality of to preserve or not. There is no time to argue about sentimentality - can we just talk about what works?

See PPS for the official opinion, where you can comment too. Or comments welcome here!