From what I could check out online, there’s a ton of written reviews and buzz about the Municipal Art Society’s Jane Jacobs exhibit and the Society has put up an interesting blog/forum website to talk about the future of the city.

I have’t come close to reading everything, but so far this Brooklyn Eagle story comes closest to my views on the subject.

“We are somewhere between Europe, where the aged cores of cities are to a considerable degree unalterable, and Asia, where cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Bombay (now Mumbai) have kicked over most recognizable traces of their past.

In today’s world of exploding, skyward-reaching cities, strict Jane Jacobsism is hardly tenable. Which is not to say that all of her ideas are obsolete. Walkability, an active street life, a diversity of uses can be incorporated into large-scale projects so that they avoid the sterility of the “skyscraper in a park” model. This was clearly on Gehry’s mind when he invoked Jacobs.”

What seems to happening in New York, is just the kind of cataclysmic change that Jane feared. But what doesn’t seem to be recognized is that this reflects the pent up demands and cost pressures which built up over years of resisting gradual change. It’s pretty clear now, that the city pretty seriously misjudged what the real demand for urban life was and now that the dam has finally been broken, there are far to few viable mixed use neighborhoods with good access to mass transit.

One good thing that’s happening is that most of the large scale development now is based far more sound principles than the sanitized car oriented sprawl of the past and the city is finally investing into mass transit like it should have years ago.