EUGENE GOODHEART
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instance, in the creation of a new capital? Jacobs, it seems evident, had
developed cities in mind. Rowse clearly did not mean to-or have to–
tear down old Boston in order to redevelop Faneuil Hall. He preserved
while making changes. What was instructive, nevertheless, was the
difference in mental set between Jacobs and Rowse. The cautionary,
improvisatory Jacobs was clearly the more congenial spirit.
It
is noteworthy that the mayor of Toronto, where Jane Jacobs
now lives, was hostile in his presentation to big plans and large scale
innovative changes. His principal achievement has been the develop–
ment of moderate income housing at the edge of the city, which simply
continues the small, "human scale" yet diverse construction of the
nineteenth century buildings that already characterize the city. The
mayor was mistrustful of the private sector, which tends to scant
moderate income housing as unprofitable, of planners, whose predilec–
tion for a showy modernism makes them indifferent to the real needs of
the people, and of politicians, who are often ignorant of what has to be
done. The mayor insisted that his planners work together with the
people in the neighborhood. He presented a cozy, watered-down
antimodernist version of Jane Jacobs's view.
Jacobs said that she almost never attends conferences because she
finds them solemn, un illuminating affairs, concerned not so much
with cities, as with the problems of cities, or rather with fashions in
thinking about the problems of cities. She spoke, however, of her
enjoyment of this conference, because of the presence of the mayors,
who were characters and characters in love with their cities. I suspect
that the charm of the mayors was more in evidence in the private
encounters and conversations that occurred between and after the
panels.
Cities are places where people live at a certain intellectual and
emotional intensity. The streets of the city are not simply conduits for
traffic in which one gets from point A to point B. They have a life
(charming and macabre) of their own, which Baudelaire celebrated
through the eyes of the
flaneur
in
Les Fleurs du Mal.
The city is not
only the breeding ground of Culture and Art: it contributes
to
the
formation of their character. Given the problems of the cities, some of
them of potentially catastrophic proportions, it may be difficult to
sustain such a vision.
On occasion, however, one glimpsed the city as other than
problem even in the presentation of the problem. The Governor of
Alexandria presented a comic picture of frustration. Bounded by the
Mediterranean on the north and by a river on the south, Alexandria can
