Jane Jacobs' First Book

Jesse Walker | August 5, 2009

I'm reading Wrestling with Moses, Anthony Flint's account of Jane Jacobs' battles with the powerful city planner Robert Moses. One fun fact I've learned from it: Though Jacobs' landmark critique of urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is almost always described as her first book, it actually was her second. Twenty years earlier, in 1941, the woman then known as Jane Butzner published an historical study called Constitutional Chaff. It's an annotated collection of ideas that had been proposed but rejected during the Constitutional Convention. She never listed it in her later bibliographies.

The book appears to be online. I haven't read it yet, so I don't know whether it's a text I'd recommend on its own merits or if it's just an interesting curio. It certainly sounds like a promising idea for a book, though. And I know I'm not the only Jacobs fan in the Reason universe. So I'm passing the link along.

Comments

birfer|8.5.09 @ 6:49PM|#

my favorite rejected constitutional idea: to allow an kenyan born marxist to qualify for the office of president!

there, I said it.

hmm|8.5.09 @ 6:58PM|#

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the
United States of America.

RANDOLPH: It is doubtful whether even a council will be sufficient to
check the improper views of an ambitious man. A unity of the executive
would savor too much of monarchy.

Foresight?

|8.5.09 @ 9:19PM|#

Jacobs is a hero to many in the New Urbanist movement, too. Flint is an active participant in the Congress for the New Urbanism. I coined the phrase NULi (noo-lee), meaning New Urbanist Libertarian, to refer to others like myself. Perhaps you are one, too. I am encouraged to see the increasing understanding that sprawl and disfunctional city layout has most often been the result of government regulation and intervention, not free market development.

|8.6.09 @ 5:31PM|#

I am also a Libertarian fan of Jane Jacobs ("Cities and the Wealth of Nations" is one of the jewels of my personal library), but I won't be using the term "NULi" to describe myself, because it is too suggestive of "null (cypher)" or "neo-whatever" (necon, in particular).

In fact, I think that "NULi," or close variations of it, are words for "zero" in other languages. So, with all affection and respect, the coiner might want to rethink the coinage. Just sayin'.

|8.6.09 @ 5:32PM|#

xxx necon = neocon

Keyboard seems to be dropping characters today ?!?!

|8.6.09 @ 5:46PM|#

Jesse, Were you already a member of Questia, did you become one to read Jacobs' book, or did you sign up for their free trial?

I tried following your link. It let me get past the title and copyright pages and see the first introductory page, but after that, it wouldn't let me proceed without signing up in some way. At one point, it appeared that I would only have to provide my email address to keep reading, but no go. Now I'm on their outgoing spam list AND I can't see more of the book without going through the free-trial signup.

I'm not very happy with the publishers' tactics. As it is so old, I wonder if this book is available anywhere else.

Jesse Walker|8.6.09 @ 9:12PM|#

Hmm. I'm not a member of Questia, and while it won't let me read the whole book it seems to be much more generous with me than with you: I can see the entire preface and intro and the beginning of Madison's material before it cuts out.