This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
A year or so ago, I wrote that Jane Jacobs was the “original NIMBY” for opposing redevelopment in her neighborhood, and I noted the irony that new urbanists — those most likely to support her ideals — are now the ones most likely to do battle with NIMBYs of their own.
That thought was incomplete. Â Jacobs wasn’t opposed to redevelopment for its sake. Â She opposed redevelopment that put concrete and steel ahead of people. Â Redevelopment that tried in vain to create “order” out of the chaotic urban fabric. Â If Robert Moses had proposed leveling the Greenwich Village brownstones and replacing them with newer brownstones, I don’t think Jacobs would have had much of a fight. Â Moses wanted to build freeways. Â That was the problem.
I was thinking about this as I walked past an old, boarded up house in my neighborhood that’s set to be torn down. Â I thought about whether I should be sad that another 100-year-old house was being town down. Â But it’s never about the architecture. Â It’s about the people who live in it. Â New urbanists envy the 19th-century urban built environment — streetcars, brownstones, walk-up apartments — but we should never forget that it’s the neighborhood vitality created by that built environment that matters, not the wrap-around Victorian porches or intricate stone cornices themselves.