Master Plan = Master Folly
21 August 2006
Editor, New Orleans Times-Picayune
To the Editor:
William Borah unwisely calls for New Orleans to be rebuilt according to "a master plan with the force of law, a plan that the politicians as well as the citizens would be legally required to follow" (Letters, August 21).
Mr. Borah and all New Orleanians should heed the wisdom of the late Jane Jacobs, one of history's greatest students of cities. Ms. Jacobs described a city's "intricate order" as "a manifestation of the freedom of countless numbers of people to make and carry out countless plans"* - and she warned that master plans of the sort that Mr. Borah admires will only suffocate this vital source of any city's life.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities (1961), p. 391.
Editor, New Orleans Times-Picayune
To the Editor:
William Borah unwisely calls for New Orleans to be rebuilt according to "a master plan with the force of law, a plan that the politicians as well as the citizens would be legally required to follow" (Letters, August 21).
Mr. Borah and all New Orleanians should heed the wisdom of the late Jane Jacobs, one of history's greatest students of cities. Ms. Jacobs described a city's "intricate order" as "a manifestation of the freedom of countless numbers of people to make and carry out countless plans"* - and she warned that master plans of the sort that Mr. Borah admires will only suffocate this vital source of any city's life.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities (1961), p. 391.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Tuesday May 8, 2007 at 1:05pm