![]() ![]() ![]() Both insist on imposing a “pretended order” on the “real order,” treating the city as a simple machine rather than a manifestation of organized complexity. Both assume that planning entails the enshrining of a single plan and the suppression of all other individual plans. Despite their diverse aesthetic preferences, Corbusier and Howard share much in common. While many take Jacobs’ essential contribution to be her insights into urban design, her subversion begins at the theoretical level in the introduction to The Death and Life of Great American Cities. With her characteristically deceptive simplicity, she invites us to ask, “Who plans?” ![]() When in 1961 Jane Jacobs set out to attack the orthodox tradition of urban planning, it was this dogma that landed squarely in her crosshairs. With the question framed as “To plan or not to plan?” students and practitioners answer with an emphatic “Yes,” subsequently setting out to impose their particular ideal order on what they perceived to be, as Lewis Mumford put it, “solidified chaos.” Whether through the controlled centralization of Le Corbusier or the controlled decentralization of Ebenezer Howard and Frank Lloyd Wright, cities were to be just that: controlled. For most of the field’s history, prominent urban planning theorists have taken for granted that cities require extensive central planning. ![]()
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