Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Reading Jane Jacobs right ...

That's what Leonard Gilroy advices in the WSJ: What Jane Jacobs Really Saw - Today's urban planners falsely claim her legacy.

Money Quote:
Modern planners have contorted Jacobs's beliefs in hopes of imposing their static, end-state vision of a city. They use a set of highly prescriptive policy tools--like urban growth boundaries, smart growth, and high-density development built around light-rail transit systems--to design the city they envision. They try to "create" livable cities from the ground up and micromanage urban form through regulation. We've seen these tools at work in Portland, Ore., for more than three decades. But the results have been dismal and dramatic. The city's "smart growth" policies effectively created a land shortage, constricting the housing supply and artificially inflating prices. By 1999, Portland had become one of the 10 least affordable housing markets in the nation, and its homeownership rate lagged behind the national average. It has also seen one of the nation's largest increases in traffic congestion and boasts a costly, heavily subsidized light-rail system that accounts for just 1% of the city's total travel. Not exactly how they planned it.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Jeff. for filling us in. Never been to Portland myself and have never read Jane Jacobs (though I once did an article about Powell's online book sales). Someone should perhaps tell Mr. Gilroy.
    We post, you dispute.

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