Today Is Jane Jacobs’ Day in Toronto
Richard Florida quoted Jane Jacobs in his weekend column in the Globe and Mail. In 2001 she said…
Expansion and development are two different things. Development is differentiation of what already existed….Expansion is an actual growth in size or volume of activity.
Jacobs’ take on city development — reusing, remolding, reinterpreting what is already present — demands a certain slowness and mindfulness that puts her ideas at odds with the expanding and expansive suburbs around Toronto (we should know better by now) but also — and counter-intuitively in a way — with the urban-infill projects downtown. The latter increases density (good) but can often be a shock to a neighbourhood’s ecosystem.
With Jacobs in the news, the annual PUG awards just announced, and a recent story of block busting all on my mind, I wanted to recommend Stewart Brand’s 1994 book How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. Brand outlines how successful buildings — like neighbourhoods in Jacobs’ world — are compositions of several layers of change.
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