dinner is foreplay for city folk
dinner

Monday, May 4, 2009

Jane Jacobs/ Dark Age Ahead/ 2004

by Eriq F

In these times of economic strife, everything seems pretty crazy, and no one's really surprised by much these days, it seems. A business losing a few billion dollars is "better than expected," and perhaps reason for a large reward. If I were to pick a Jane's Addiction album title to sum it up, it'd be "Nothing's Shocking". Still, even these days, it's a bit odd that one of the best analyses of our current situation was written 5 years ago by a woman who's been dead for three years now.

Most well known for her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as well as being a perennial pain in the ass of many a city planner, Jane Jacobs died in 2006. Her final book, 2004's Dark Age Ahead, predicts the current economic/financial/housing/everything crisis pretty accurately. This fact on its own isn't necessarily remarkable, since there were a chorus of ignored voices predicting the colossal bursting of the housing bubble. As I've already mentioned, Dark Age Ahead was written five years ago, so its focus is not on this financial crisis (which, if you're like me, you're tired of hearing about). The financial crisis is mentioned in passing, as being rather inevitable. It's a red herring compared to her large point, which is that North American culture is heading towards a dark age, where the culture will be forgotten, and even the memory of what was lost will be lost. Since this is a pretty bold claim, Jacobs spends the first part of the book laying out her argument for how this would even be possible. The rest of the book details five pillars of our culture which she argues have fallen from grace.

If all of this sounds pretty depressing... well... yeah, it is. But it's no mistake that the first sentence of the book "This book is both a gloomy and hopeful book." Jacobs does outline how things can be turned around, a touch of optimism which saves the book from being a complete downer.

What makes Dark Age Ahead interesting is the same thing that made The Death and Life... a classic: Jacobs' clear-eyed ability to take several steps back from the problem and look at the underlying causes. I can't help but think that this approach should not be as refreshing as it is. It's been almost fifty years since the publication of The Death and Life... in 1961, and city planners have only recently started taking her suggestions into account in projects (and in each instance, there's plenty of astonishment when her suggestions almost always work). We can only hope that either someone heeds the warnings of Dark Age Ahead a bit sooner, or that the book is not as accurate of an analysis.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 

Do You Want Fries With That?

By Max Gold, Age 13

There’s a quiet little town, in a world, on about a 78 degrees angle from Venus, about 2389329 miles away from Venus, full of really, really, really fat people. These people loved to eat; they would eat everything, from liver to asparagus, from chocolate to Sticky Cheese, and from Jelly to Jam. Now these people were happy people and no one ever put them down.

Outside Earth, there’s this gigantic space ship. This space ship looks exactly like a hamburger, with seeds every few yards and all. Their salt and pepper guns were loaded, and ready to hit this planet full of fat people (although they the McDonaldians didn‘t know they were fat.) The King Grilled Chicken stood up on the ice cream cone pillar, ready to make a speech.

“Hello My fellow McDonaldians” The King Grilled Chicken said. “Today we march down to earth, and we fight to death!” he screamed.

This got much applause, especially from a Chicken nugget, named Crispy Gangsta. “Yeah let’s show dem homies we gunna pop a soda cap up their-” But he was cut off when the king threw a ketchup packet at him. “Shut it. Now unleash all flamin’ hot sauce!” The King screamed.

Down on Earth all the fat people were having a “we-ate-ten-thousand-pieces-of-chicken-day.” Now as we all know that’s a huge celebration, everyone who’s anyone goes there.

Then, out of nowhere, it started raining salt and pepper. Then the sound of hamburgers the size of pillows ringed in everyone ears. Then… a giant pillow sized hamburger flew down from the sky. It was Crispy Gangsta ready for action.

Unfortunately a boy named Chungy saw Crispy’s ship and got over excited. He ran at the hamburger full force, and swallowed Crispy Gangsta whole. Then he tore that hamburger down and ate the entire thing in five seconds, and wanted more. Then the rest of the space ships came down. In half an hour not one scrap of food was left. Except the mother ship which had landed.

“I come to you humans in peace and hope we can make a fair agreement, and-” but he got cut off when Chungy got a little too hungry. He swallowed the king in one gulp. The poor McDonaldians had no idea what was coming… But the voluptuous folk on the ground sure got a lot of fun out of eating the mother ship.

CLOSE [X]