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POWER_BROKE

                                              July 1, 2006

                                                 JANE_JACOBS

Quotations from Jane Jacobs,
from an interview with Reason:
                                     [ref]

  Jacobs: [...] That attitude-- that you
  can sacrifice small things, young
  things, and a diversity of things for
  some great big success-- is sad.
  That's the kind of attitude that killed
  Pittsburgh as an innovator.

  Reason: And it comes from people
  who either have the power or the
  money or both to have their way?

  Jacobs: Well, they have their way with the
  powers of eminent domain, government powers
  that were intended for things like schools
  and roads and public things, and are used
  instead for the benefit of private
  organizations and individuals.

  That's one of the worst things about urban
  renewal. It introduced that idea that you
  could use those government powers to benefit
  private organizations. The courts never have
  given the kind of overview to this that they
  should. The time it went to the Supreme
  Court, back in the 1950s, the decision was
  that to make a place beautiful or more
  orderly or helpful, government could do what
  it pleased with eminent domain. That just
  left the door open. As one New York state
  official said at the time, "If Macy's wants
  to condemn Gimbel's, it can do it if Moses
  gives the word."

  Reason: Robert Moses, the New York City
  planner and infamous power broker.

  Jacobs: Yes. He's an extreme example, but in
  effect that's what the shift in eminent
  domain law did. But even before that, it was
  being done unofficially when what had grown
  big and successful was used to eat up, or
  wipe away, or starve what was not. You might
  as well have no birth rate and then wonder
  why there aren't people. If you don't have an
  entrepreneurial birth rate, you don't have
  new industries and new chances for other
  successes.




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