Mention Jane Jacobs’ name, and a lot of people will clap their hands in glee.

But discuss Jane Jacobs’ legacy, critically, and expect to be met with scorn, derided, … or attacked, physically.

Regardless of what she “stood” for, I think the reality is, her ideas aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

Very impractical.

Everyone always quotes her, although I bet a lot of people haven’t even read her most famous book, “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” “The Death and Life of Great American Cities“.

Sort of like Rachel Carson, you know?

Anyway, I don’t have the patience right now to write what I wanted to, but basically it was a rant about how real-life cities are so totally different from the fiction that was written by Ms. Jacobs, that it’s not worth even discussing her.

There was a good article in yesterday’s NY Sun about a block of apartment buildings put up in the early 1960’s, which Jane Jacobs had supported in place of plans to flatten the entire neighborhood to be replaced with “gleaming” high-rises (think Charles River Park).

West Village Houses a Monument to a 1960s Development Battle - By Julia Vitullo-Martin, The New York Sun

Conceived in idealism, their construction fell prey to a decade of delays and escalating construction costs that ate away at the architectural standards Jacobs had first proposed. By the time they opened in 1974, the houses were reviled by Jacobs as well as by most architectural critics, despite having been designed by the distinguished architectural firm of Perkins and Will. Indeed, the New York Times once called the houses “an unloved failure.”

Of course, purists say that, even though this project was a failure, it’s not the fault of “Saint Jane”, and it doesn’t negate all the good she promised.

“This is a very alive building,” playwright Suzanne Stout said of her apartment house on Washington Street. “We know one another and, if a calamity occurs, we take care of one another. Jane Jacobs was right. She understood community. Her ideas work.”

Well, work if the government steps in to make it work, with millions of dollars in subsidies (which is what they did, since the buildings’ owners have never been able to make a dime off them).

The developer began selling off the units as co-ops, in 2006, so eventually (hopefully), this “urban experiment” will be over.

I know I didn’t write this entry very well, sorry about that. I bit off a bit more than I could chew. Hopefully you read this far along, and at least got a general idea about what I’m saying. I hope this encourages you to learn more about urban planning and design in the 20th (and 21st) Century.

Our lives depend on it.

(If you take the time to read Jane Jacobs’ book, then I demand you also read Ayn Rand’s “You Aren’t Working Hard Enough” Atlas Shrugged“.)