Who Owns Jane Jacobs

That an unrepentant right-winger, such as I, would embrace the writings of Jane Jacobs should settle the matter. But many on the left wish dearly to claim her ideas on urban affairs as their own.  And while it would be foolish to think she was a conservative (she did move her family to Canada to spare her sons the Viet Nam draft,) there's nothing in her writings on cities that could be interpreted as approving the left's big-government ideas either.

City Comforts Blog addresses the issue.

Overall a pretty good radio discussion on Jane Jacobs at Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio. Some of the guests — especially anthropology prof Neil Smith — had a distinct anti-market bias, which was a big weakness, especially as Smith in particular seemed quite ill-informed. For example, he suggested that our urban problems must be laid at the feet of the real estate industry and that housing should be produced by non-market entities, such as "tenant cooperatives."

There are two problems:

1. Non-market entities can and do already take part in the housing market.
2. I defy a group of non-specialists to produce even a single-family house in today's extraordinarily complex regulatory environment.

What some left-wingers don't quite get is that housing is expensive because it is valued. The builder's profit margin is not the difference between a cheap housing market and an expensive one. It is expensive to build, period. Moreover, windfall profits in extremely tight markets are not the creation of the real estate industry but of society at large and of regulation in particular, regulation initially forced on government by liberal neighborhoods. At least that's the story from Seattle.

Oh well, it was still a good show and it was public radio, so what does one expect but a liberal bias? And the show did bolster my point that now that Jacobs is dead, we will see ferocious battles to capture her memory for one or another perspective, which I guess should act as a tribute to her importance. I urge Lydon to follow-up with more shows on Jacobs' legacy in particular and on the built environment in general.

Indeed. And no right-wing ideologue he.

 

Overall a pretty good radio discussion on Jane Jacobs at Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio. Some of the guests — especially anthropology prof Neil Smith — had a distinct anti-market bias, which was a big weakness, especially as Smith in particular seemed quite ill-informed. For example, he suggested that our urban problems must be laid at the feet of the real estate industry and that housing should be produced by non-market entities, such as "tenant cooperatives."

There are two problems:

1. Non-market entities can and do already take part in the housing market.
2. I defy a group of non-specialists to produce even a single-family house in today's extraordinarily complex regulatory environment.

What some left-wingers don't quite get is that housing is expensive because it is valued. The builder's profit margin is not the difference between a cheap housing market and an expensive one. It is expensive to build, period. Moreover, windfall profits in extremely tight markets are not the creation of the real estate industry but of society at large and of regulation in particular, regulation initially forced on government by liberal neighborhoods. At least that's the story from Seattle.

Oh well, it was still a good show and it was public radio, so what does one expect but a liberal bias? And the show did bolster my point that now that Jacobs is dead, we will see ferocious battles to capture her memory for one or another perspective, which I guess should act as a tribute to her importance. I urge Lydon to follow-up with more shows on Jacobs' legacy in particular and on the built environment in general.