Jane Jacobs, Rest in Peace
Indeed, one of the reasons that I continue to live in the city proper rather than the suburbs is that I believe in the sort of urban world that Jacobs describes. Though there has been a lot of unfortunate suburbanization in Minneapolis and St. Paul–the horrid Block E complex downtown, for example, that mimics a suburban cineplex with chain stores and mainstream movies–pockets of wondrously urban life still exist. In my own neighborhood, there’s the wonderful corner of 38th Street and 42nd Avenue, with a garden shop, movie theater, wine bar, coffee shop, and antique store bringing in a good mix of folks. And there’s the melange of East Lake Street–the new Mexican and Hmong and Somali stores interspersed with old stalwarts like Ingebretsen’s and Heart of the Beast and Northern Sun–though that’s threatened by the city’s “beautification” project on Lake. Though Minneapolis tends toward the broad and sparse rather than the tight and dense, it’s still a darned good city most days.
I was actually thinking about Mrs. Jacobs last week while reading Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Brief History of the Dead“. I don’t know if Mr. Brockmeier read Jacobs, but the after-life he describes in his city of the dead–coffee shops and libraries and busy streets and public squares–sounded to me like the perfect image of a Jane Jacobs Heaven.
And so if there is indeed a city of the dead where you can open up a candy store and chat with your fellow departed souls over a copy of a hastily printed broadsheet of gossip, then surely Jane Jacobs is there to watch over the beautiful and hectic chaos of those sidewalks.
