Jane Jacobs

But it's not to dismiss the other option.

And in fact, there's a lot more... tall houses going up around the world that way than what Jane Jacobs would approve of.

I think Le Corbusier may have beaten Jane at that game, but I guess that's for a whole other book and another argument.

I guess I wanted to bring us back to what we're doing now and you know, it's a little scary because as I said in a previous conversation with you, we try to do good things and then things don't always turn out the way we want.

In rural areas, the range of jobs is simpler.

In fact, the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who specialized in city planning which we'll talk about more next time, has argued that instead of thinking of economic development as something that happens to countries, It's a process that happens in and through cities.

Unlike countries which are defined by their borders, cities are economic entities geographically defined by their connections.

So for instance, Shanghai, the foremost financial and trade center of China, is as closely tied to another preeminent city like Singapore as it is to almost any other Chinese city.

And of course, it was a very important action, a very important movement.

Like also, if you look at Jane Jacobs, you know, saving the West Village, this is great, but if you look at the West Village today, this is not exactly what she wanted to save, no? So placemaking originally didn't really cope with the potential side effects or dangers.

And of course, if you go back to one of those cities where placemaking was very important as a means to actually cure the city, I think we have very different dangers.

And this is, as you also mentioned in your introduction, this is commercialization.