Jane’s Walk USA is a project celebrating 50 years since the publication of Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The project encourages the exploration of where you live and provides some ideas for things to do.
Jane’s Walk USA
A simple thought occurs here. While Jane Jacob’s book looks to prioritise the social human need in the development of the city environment, In Eco art we are in many ways protecting the environment from the needs and demands of people. We are seeking to alter, limit & create awareness of those needs .There is a move to mediation between environment and social need but ultimately we seem to be prioritising environment
Thanks for your comment. Anne Douglas and I used Jane Jacobs’ Nature of Economies as a means to reflect on project work that we had done, and Jacobs’ argument that economies are governed by the same basic functions as ecologies has been very useful to me over many years. Her argument includes self-limitation as part of the story, but assumes that development (note not growth) is an essential function. And at the end she talks about play (in animals) as a mechanism to divert energy away from consumption of the environment. I do think that her version of healthy cities is fundamentally a sustainable one, even if she doesn’t use that language (and even if there is still an argument about what sustainable means).
I will be fascinated to read the bit about ‘play (in animals) as a mechanism to divert energy away from consumption of the environment’ . Human play can be very destructive of the environment are there any art projects engaging with this.