We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
One of the best magazines in the world City Journal, the New York-based magazine, is rapidly turning into one of my favourite reads (many of its articles are now on-line). It carries writers of wit and grace on all manner of issues, many on education, urban life and business. It is now, in my view, streets ahead (‘scuse the pun) of the Spectator, which lost the plot under the editorship of Boris Johnson, whom I now regard frankly as a twerp. City Journal ranks alongside the rejuvinated Atlantic Monthly and Prospect magazine as a place to go for having one’s views challenged and stretched.
I strongly recommend the latest issue, which has an appreciation of the late writer, Jane Jacobs, who helped take apart the case for centralised planning of towns, and a review of the life of Robspierre, and a must-read piece on Iran by Mark Steyn, who happily is still churning out great material despite parting ways with the Telegraph Group.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
I totally agree with you about City Journal. It is simply excellent and leaves the Spectator standing a quarter of a mile back with a straw in its mouth.
Also very good is the New Criterion, if you haven’t tried it.
But City Journal is the best, agreed. Theodore Dalrymple writes for it (and The New Criterion) – and appears not to write for The Speccie any more. The Speccie, which I haven’t even bothered to visit this week, appears to be embarked on a programme of ridding itself of its best writers. Very strange … I have a feeling the Barclay brothers must have bought it and The Telegraph for prestige, but don’t really like people with incisive and independent views.
“…who helped take apart the case for centralised planning of towns,…”
That is indeed one of those common myths going around. I think it’s misleading and a mis-reading oif her. Certainly Jane Jacobs did not favor _bad_ planning. But the idea that she was against planning is wishful thinking. Even adding the modifier “centralised” doesn’t help too as the scale of planning depends on the function. For example, providing water and sewerage for a city the size of New York City is not something best done block-by-block but on a city-wide if not a regional basis.
Jacobs’ importance is not that she was against planning but that she was FOR planning which emphasised the pedestrian.
P.S. Husock’s article is well-worth reading. It is one of the more perceptive assessments of her thinking.
Agred on City Journal, which for years was the only Dead Tree subscription I had.
I’m still scratching my head about the “new” Atlantic Monthly. Last time I looked (a couple of months back), it seemed like the same old neo-Lefty publication it always was.
Here’s the sainted Steyn on Iran, and you are working up to a giggle of recognition from the first paragraph. (Link)
Seattle Man, I really cannot see, having read all of Jacobs’ works, as I have, how one could deny that she was against centralised planning of towns. She was.
Jonathan Pearce.
Before we go further in disagreeing about whether she was for or against it, perhaps we should see if we mean the same thing by “centralized planning of towns.” Since this is your blog and post, may I suggest that you offer your definition?
Sure. For clarity’s sake, I thought she made it absolutely, crystal clear, that she was against the idea of things like zoning, ripping up whole neighbourhoods against the will of property owners, etc. She certainly did take a dim view of trying to impose a rigid plan on a town, since she understood that towns are essentially organic phenomena. That is why I disagreed with you, at least on a fast read of what you said.
Anyway, I may write a separate post about her influence and ideas, so maybe we can come back to this. She is one
Johnathon – and so are you, darling.
Can one take seriously a guru of urban planning who chose to live in Toronto?
Metro Toronto has to be one of the world’s most dysfunctional urban hodgepodges on the planet.
Millie, I don’t think Jacobs’ choice of home really means her views are mistaken! That is a bit of an unfair argument, if I may say so.
Jonathan, mea culpa, if that’s the message my comment carried.
I did not discount her philosophy but only suggested that her credibility might be questioned because of where she chose to live.
By the same token one questions Tony Blair’s praising the digital revolution when it turned out he had no hands on experience of computers and the same for Chirac’s recent chauvinistic promotion of the European answer to Google. It’s a form of the do as I say not as I do syndrome that sticks in my craw.
What’s wrong with Tornoto (that isn’t shared with every other North American city)? I have only been there once and while I was not blown away by it — as one is by Vancouver BC, for example — it seemed like a nice-enough place.
Mr. Pearce — looking forward to your longer post on Jacobs.
As for now:
• zoning — I don’t agree. There is no evidence that she was against zoning per se. She was for very simple codes. And she was against stupid single-use auto-oriented zoning, sure. But she admited the necessity of some sort of land use maps and codes especially if one is trying to re-orient North American suburbs to a pedestrian-oriented form, which she agreed is a valid purpose and is as big a plan as one can imagine.
• ripping up whole neighbourhoods against the will of property owners — I agree with you totally.
Seattle Man, you ask what’s wrong with Toronto. Well unlike many other generic North American cities Toronto has gorgeous natural advantages – the Lake Ontario shoreline, ravines galore but it has developed in pockets of splendor side by side with stretches of squalor. There is no coherence to the place.
The financial district is big city awesome, the area around the provincial parliament and the University of Toronto equally so but go to the AGO( Art Gallery of Ontario) and you’re in semi slums.
The ethnic neighbourhoods are fun and funky but turn a corner and you’re in scare city. And then there’s the disastrous Gardiner Expressway – an elevated hell strip along the lake – that’s a sampling of what ails Canada’s most populous city.
Anyone else notice this blog post referred on the City Journal “CJ in the News” section? Any print journal that references blogs with any degree of respect is worth a look-in…
Verity –
the sainted Steyn
Geez, woman, I know Steyn is a talented writer, with a great facility for the clever turn of phrase, but to be able to submit an article from beyond the grave – well, that’s just genius.
RobtE
I love shopping……….. Last week I purchased a set of sports magazines from Valore Books store through Couponalbum.com at most discounted price…….!!