It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.— Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty Imagine the … [Read more...]
The Great Mind And Vision Of Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006), one of the most important and influential public intellectuals of the twentieth century, died a few days shy of her ninetieth birthday. The intellectual legacy she left for social theorists is as significant as that of anyone else of her generation.She … [Read more...]
Episode 05: Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring on Vital Little Plans
This week on the Market Urbanism Podcast, I chat with Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring on the wonderful new volume Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. From Jacobs' McCarthy-era defense of unorthodox thinking to snippets of her unpublished history of humanity, the book is a … [Read more...]
The Invisible City
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a short, often wonderful but consistently enigmatic (at least to me) novel about an extended conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Marco tells the Khan a series of tales about fantastical cities he’s perhaps only imagined.I’ve always … [Read more...]
Markets As Cities
Why are a growing number of libertarians fascinated by cities and indeed pinning their hopes for a freer future on cities? Two examples of this just from recent Freeman issues are by Zachary Caceres on startup cities and the winner of the Thorpe-Freeman Blog Contest, Adam Millsap, responding to one … [Read more...]
Episode 03: Sanford Ikeda on Jane Jacobs
My guest this week is Sanford Ikeda, a professor of economics at SUNY Purchase and a visiting scholar at New York University. He has written extensively on urban economics, policy, and planning.Professor Ikeda introduced me to urban economics and urban planning when he gave a … [Read more...]
Urban Design and Social Complexity
This week’s column is drawn from a lecture I gave at the University of Southern California on the occasion of the retirement of urban economist Peter Gordon.One of my heroes is the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who taught me to appreciate the importance for entrepreneurial development of how public … [Read more...]
Visions of Progress: Henry George vs. Jane Jacobs
Henry George and Jane Jacobs each have an enthusiastic following today, including, I’m sure, some readers of The Freeman.For those who might not know, Henry George is the late-19th-century American intellectual best known for his proposal of a “single tax” from which he believed the … [Read more...]