Jane Jacobs is a Baller

I generally don't use that phrase but it seems appropriate here. Totally unrelated to Honduras, I recently started trying to make my way through The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and so far its pretty awesome:

There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend --the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars-- we could wipe out all our [urban problems]...

But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lack-luster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

...There is nothing economically or socially inevitable about [this]...On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are getting.


What's really impressive is that this was written in 1961, but it seems like many of the problems she lays out we are still facing today (even, in many ways, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras). Its also just so well --and hard-corely-- written!