Purposive Drift

An esthetics of drift

I have been meaning to say something about Jane Jacobs for some time. She has long been a big influence on my thinking. Reading through some of my recent entries, I realised that I didn't mention her by name when I quoted her remarks on "an esthetics of drift" in "Echoes of Purposive Drift" - an important omission since this is the origin of the "Drift" in "Purposive Drift".

Doing a bit of research this morning I found a long interview with her on the World Bank site. Lots of provocative stuff and some obvious links with "Creativity, the economy and politics". The interview is well worth a careful read. (Warning, it?s a big PDF file) Here is a taster:

"...is also destructive to try to make all the cities of a nation alike by putting them into a comprehensive development framework. This ignores the particularity of cities. The minute you begin to prescribe for cities? infrastructure or programs comprehensively, you try to make one size fit all. Actually, different cities, if they're working properly, are not behaving the same way at the same time. Some may be doing well on exporting but aren't replacing imports much. Others are doing just the opposite. Some, at a given time, may be receiving many immigrants. Others are not. If they're behaving properly, each has its own kinds of work emerging. Creative cities have even more individuality than nations. Cities are much older economic entities than nations. "