Fukuyama on L'Enfant .:. grubbykid.com

Fukuyama on L'Enfant

L'Enfant Map, originally uploaded by plemeljr

Francis Fukuyama has what is billed as a book review, L’Enfant’s Washington which ostensibly discusses Pierre Charles L'Enfant design for 1791 Plan for Washington , but I don't quite know what to make of this review:

The Washington that resulted from all of this planning and Federal money is not a Jane Jacobs type of city. It reflects the vision of Alexander Hamilton, not Thomas Jefferson. It is an imperial capital, seat of the world’s hyperpower, a place where decisions affecting much of the rest of the world are made. Americans are very uncomfortable admitting this to themselves. The humbler Jeffersonian vision of what the nation was or should be still commands substantial support. Given their anti-statist political culture, Americans also have trouble admitting to themselves that this national greatness would not have come about but for the strong hand of the Federal government—an observation no less true in foreign and security policy than in the design of the country’s capital city.

It is obvious that the world of architecture and urban design is still grappling with the question of who is right: Jane Jacobs or Le Corbusier. Are cities and urban spaces the result of happenstance and grass-roots social capital? Or is it by grand plans which humanity merely filters into the holes and slots allocated to them. This is a larger questions which is being asked and asked throughout the world, especially in American cities which have neither the established history to guide them nor often the long-term political will to effect needed change for all residents.

One way to read this is that the (reformed???) Neocon author is seemingly still searching for the idealized world using state power. Alternatively, it seems that Fukuyama is still coming to grips on the fact that centralized, authoritarian power can create great evils and injustices in the world: from the Iraq war to Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes or Cabrini-Green.

Yet Fukuyama solution to seems to be vesting power in the "right" kind of authoritarians such as the New Urbanists, who are neither new or urban, or overly-grand plans such as L'Enfant's or perhaps Burnham's Chicago Plan or the National Capital Planning Commission's plan Extending the Legacy.

This very much an example the Incompetence Dodge, except instead of Iraq, it is urban planning. That the problem isn't the mechanism, but rather the people at the helm seems to be overly trustful of the institutions which often have very limited transparency. Not that I do not think central planning and organization has its' merits, but Fukuyama's blind trust in this power should be suspect. Because it did give us Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a whole host of urban ills.

Read the article, and ask yourself which side of the dialectic you favor: Jane or Corb?

Comments

urbanodelacruz says:

Neither or both. As in all things, the truth is probably somewhere between "Death and Life" and the Athens Charter.

There is room for visionary leadership that can produce Hausmann's Paris or Olmsted's Central Park or the Emerald Necklace. There is also a need for community consensus and shared visions.

There is room for advanced design thinking that looks at the issues from various scales, and room for stakeholder input that brings issues to the ground level.

After all, Robert Moses may have threatened to run a highway through Jacob's beloved Greenwich Village, but he did build bridges and public parks and pools and cultural centers which pretty much define the NYC of today.