Do people actually read Jane Jacobs anymore, or has she become a misappropriated symbol for old-guard thinking in the same way that she was misappropriated as a symbol for David-vs-Goliath preservationism? Even Kazys now suggests that we throw her out in the face of gentrifying and demographically inverting cities -- things that make her core arguments for variation, limited regulation, and localism more relevant than ever. Her most revered book is nearly 50 years(!!!) old, he exclaims. What good could she be to us now?
Token Jacobsism.
