Daily Blague

The death of Jane Jacobs prompted me to do something that I ought to have done at least upon the inauguration of the Bush Administration: to re-read Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life. Reading this book when it came out in 1984 was a moment of startling political clarification, for its challenge to traditional economics was instantly persuasive, and for the first time in my life I could conceive of a truly desirable civil arrangement. There is no doubt that I already shared Jacobs's preference for the small and open-ended to the large and controlled, as well as a dislike of large corporations. The latter is only implicit in Cities, but there is no way that its principles can be reconciled with the furtherance of business organizations that hire more than, say, 150 people. What Jacobs could only guess was the role that computers might play in making her dream of a world of city-states come true.

This will be the first of several pages on Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Some of them will discuss things that Jacobs actually writes, while other will tease out implications and obstacles. The book's last three chapters read like a springboard into...

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