Jacobs & Locke smack down Pascal & Corbu

Today, the community and creativity of cities—a consequence of many people interacting in all aspects of life—is widely recognized as one of cities’ greatest strengths. Naturally, then, Jane Jacobs’ celebration of the vibrant city seems obvious and Le Corbusier’s vision of the isolating city of huge towers and empty spaces seems ridiculous, the product of his ideas like L’Enfant Plaza widely reviled.

But according to a thought-provoking article, The Antisocial Urbanism of Le Corbusier, the concept of human interaction as necessarily desirable was not always the consensus belief. From Rene Descartes to Blaise Pascal to Albert Camus, solitude fought with community for dominance as the ideal human condition.

Jacobs’ and Florida’s celebration of community, on the other hand, draws on the intellectual tradition of John Locke, also the predominant influence on the Declaration of Independence. Those ideas ultimately won out, though not until relatively recent times; as Simon Richards says in the paper, “For the greater part of the last twenty-five hundred years, the question ‘what are cities good for?’ would have garnered the answer: ‘good for nothing.’ Today, they are highly desired and architects who plan “the Death of the Street,” as Le Corbusier did, find themselves roundly mocked in popular off-Broadway performances.