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May 8, 2006
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, the 'godmother' of urban planning, died last week.
I didnt know of her until I read th obits, but her influence can be seen and felt even in Dublin.
In a nutshell - or at least the nutshell that I have gathered so far in my limited reading on the subject over the last couple of days - Jane Jacobs was to urban planning what Charles Darwin was to evolution, sort of.
She examined the way communities in cities sprang up, how their differences and similarities to the whole (the city, country) initiated and sustained them.
She spoke of areas with diversity and easy travel with an environment that catered to the needs of the inhabitants as being the most successful. She championed incremental change and experimentation.
Unfortunately many urban planners who claim to be influenced by her tailor/design/build urban centers expecting them to appeal to a certain group of people.
How does this affect me? I live in Smithfield. It has long been touted as the next big thing in Dublin. I love living there myself but the reality does not gybe with the hype.
I live in one block of a series of high-rise apartments. Its great. Spacious, with floor to ceiling windows and doors looking out onto Smithfield square with a balcony wide enough to accmmodate chairs and a small table. Fantastic. I wake up every day with a fuzzy feeling inside about it all.
However, the ground level view is a little different. The hype projects an image of hazy, warm summer nights filled with hip urbanites chilling in cafés and poking about in interesting little shops and museums.
The reality is a little different. All the shops, bar an admittedly nice supermarket, are lying empty. The hype machine keeps turning and telling us that this summer will be different. The buildings will all be finished and sit for months or years on the stillborn dreams of property developers cashing in on the desires of urban planners.
The 'locals' (aboriginies?) do scoff at us for being posh. No doubt they notice the concrete dust and squalor of the pre-abandoned units beneath our living space, on display behind hermetically installed double-glazing. The ante-commerical dustbowls are our cabinet of curios - empty, just as our dectractors expect them to be, allowing them to nod and grin as we shuffle past to buy out of date ginger at twice the price in the 'local' supermarket or brave the triad members in the even more 'local' chinese market. They know and show it. We know and ignore.
Just to add insult to injury, the dream has been killed. The spaces, once pregnant with the possibility of bustling cafes with sexy, foreign barristae and languid caffeine addicts (is there such a thing) talking the night away in a pseudo bohemian way, have been gievn over to more dust. They will be offices.
Posted by dottie at May 8, 2006 3:03 PM