fixBuffalo

Planetizen...Dead On!

The latest issue of Planetizen arrived today. Get it here, it's free! Three pieces caught my eye.

• Why We Neglect Historic Preservation in Low-Income Neigborhoods

• Philadelphia's most attractive and expensive neighborhoods are often at least partially contained within historic districts that protect the old urban form of the built environment. Not so for low-income sections. "While most of Philadelphia's historic districts are in well-off areas, it is our poorest areas that need protection the most." Read it here.
  

• A Letter from Jane Jacobs

• "My name is Jane Jacobs. I am a student of cities, interested in learning why some cities persist in prospering while others persistently decline; why some provide social environments that fulfill the dreams and hopes of ambitious and hardworking immigrants, but others cruelly disappoint the hopes of immigrant parents that they have found an improved life for their children." Read it here.

Jane's letter is addressed to Mayor Bloomberg is response to a project going down in Brooklyn. It first appeared earlier this month in The Brooklyn Rail, which I always check out when I am in Williamsburg.

I've archived A Letter from Jane Jacobs as many of these lessons pertain to the eventual long-term revitalization of Buffalo. Recent posts about the life and work of Jane Jacobs can be found here in May and over here in January.

• Being Cool Isn't Enough, A City Needs A Soul

• Cities need a sense of moral purpose to survive and flourish. It's not enough, [Joel Kotkin] argues, for them to serve merely as a center of commerce. It's that idea that helps me the most as I continue my critique of the modern planning movements. In a recent interview, Kotkin complained to me that New Urbanists and others who want to recreate urban living as a rebuke to suburbanization tend to miss this almost-spiritual side to city planning." Planetizen Link requires registration, so I've archived it here.

Here, columnist Steven Greenhut makes many of the more "mundane" and quiet ordinary points that Joel Kotkin made in his major corrective piece on "new urbanism" recently in The Rise of the Ephemeral City.

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