Daily Blague

Jane Jacobs died yesterday, aged eighty-nine. The first of her titles that I read was Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), when it came out. I've just pulled it down from the shelf for another look. Jacobs was famous, of course, for her perceptions of urban fabric; in Cities, she shows herself to be a city-stater. Were it not for problems of defense, I'd be one, too; the city-state seems to me to be the natural polity. Hinterlands exist to serve the cities they surround; it is foolish to accede to local interests that are contrary to the city's.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's new book, it appears (from David Kamp's review) that the author stumbled upon a wonderfully autarchic alternative farmer in Virginia, Joel Salatin. Something of a crank, Mr Salatin asks Mr Pollan, "Why do we have to have a New York City? What good is it?" Well, Mr Salatin, New York City, like all the great cities, is a chaotic laboratory in which millions of experiments in humanity are conducted every day. Most of these are ephemeral, and many of them fail. But out of the dense exchange come our higher ideas about what we're up to. Without us, Mr Salatin, and without the cities that have flourished before ours, you, Mr Salatin, you would be living in a cave, living on nuts. It is in cities that human beings learn about themselves, and it is from human beings that misanthropes such as yourself flee. Godspeed, Mr Salatin. Keep up your admirable work. Happily, since you sell your produce to local customers only, we can manage without you. But give some thought to how much of the money that your customers pay you has recently been in a city. Has been generated there, just as you produce manure to put to good use.