It should not be so hard to write both poetry and fiction. Both arts, after all, make use of the same materials, words and punctuation. Poems...
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“You can observe a lot just by looking” opined New York philosopher Yogi Berra. Starting with its title, this collection of essays again and again comes back to the source of Jane Jacobs genius – really seeing by looking around her without preconceptions, then thinking deeply about what she saw. Starting with her classic Death & Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs transformed urban thinking by building theories around the concrete, not the abstract.
For anyone wanting to understand Jacobs, What We See provides the varying insights of 30 writers into how she changed the world we live in. This book is a great complement to the recent books about her, Wrestling With Moses and Urban Visionary. The fact that the latter positive biography was unauthorized is a testimony to how Jacobs wanted to keep the spotlight on the world around us and not on her personally.
What We See is notable for the breadth of its contributors. Besides the predictable collection of architects, planners and politicians (not that there’s anything wrong with them), perhaps the most interesting contributions are from people supposedly “outside her field” – the biologist, the youth minister, the playwright. Of course not much was outside Jacobs’ field, her lesson is not to search for the predictable but to see what is.
The essays testify to Jane Jacobs’ importance not only in the field of city planning (which she reshaped into perhaps city cultivation), but on the ground in the two cities where she spent her adult life – New York and Toronto. And of course in hundreds of others such as Portland, Oregon where I live, which has built its entire civic discussion and fought battles around her insights involving thousands of people who have never heard of her, but want to have voices in their neighborhoods.
I would like to see more about her community activism (where she was perhaps the most important model besides Saul Alinky) and her ideas on economics (Nobel prize winning economist Robert Lucas thought she should have gotten the prize for her contributions). But perhaps that’s another book.
Fabulous. I started reading it over a year ago, took a break, then just finished it. Each story is a glimpse into the pathos and hilarity of being human together. Its about people who are less than perfect -- and aren't we all?
I came to the website because I'm going to get copies for my three daughters.
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Michael Wells has commented on (2) products.
What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs by Stephen A. Goldsmith
Michael Wells, May 29, 2010
“You can observe a lot just by looking” opined New York philosopher Yogi Berra. Starting with its title, this collection of essays again and again comes back to the source of Jane Jacobs genius – really seeing by looking around her without preconceptions, then thinking deeply about what she saw. Starting with her classic Death & Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs transformed urban thinking by building theories around the concrete, not the abstract.For anyone wanting to understand Jacobs, What We See provides the varying insights of 30 writers into how she changed the world we live in. This book is a great complement to the recent books about her, Wrestling With Moses and Urban Visionary. The fact that the latter positive biography was unauthorized is a testimony to how Jacobs wanted to keep the spotlight on the world around us and not on her personally.
What We See is notable for the breadth of its contributors. Besides the predictable collection of architects, planners and politicians (not that there’s anything wrong with them), perhaps the most interesting contributions are from people supposedly “outside her field” – the biologist, the youth minister, the playwright. Of course not much was outside Jacobs’ field, her lesson is not to search for the predictable but to see what is.
The essays testify to Jane Jacobs’ importance not only in the field of city planning (which she reshaped into perhaps city cultivation), but on the ground in the two cities where she spent her adult life – New York and Toronto. And of course in hundreds of others such as Portland, Oregon where I live, which has built its entire civic discussion and fought battles around her insights involving thousands of people who have never heard of her, but want to have voices in their neighborhoods.
I would like to see more about her community activism (where she was perhaps the most important model besides Saul Alinky) and her ideas on economics (Nobel prize winning economist Robert Lucas thought she should have gotten the prize for her contributions). But perhaps that’s another book.
Why Do I Love These People?: Understanding, Surviving, and Creating Your Own Family by Po Bronson
Michael Wells, December 29, 2007
Fabulous. I started reading it over a year ago, took a break, then just finished it. Each story is a glimpse into the pathos and hilarity of being human together. Its about people who are less than perfect -- and aren't we all?I came to the website because I'm going to get copies for my three daughters.