Interesting way to sum up the book

Jane Jacobs, Social Critic Who Redefined and Championed Cities, Is Dead at 89.

"Death and Life" made four basic recommendations for creating municipal diversity:

1. A street or district must serve several primary functions.

2. Blocks must be short.

3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use.

4. Population must be dense.

It's probably time for me to re-read it as there is something about this list which doesn't seem quite right.

First of all, I don't think Jacobs would offer "diversity" by itself as a goal. At least I hope not. Diversity is a byproduct of something else and by itself just doesn't move me.  For example, I have no problem being in some very un-diverse places e.g. Aspen, Colorado. For my own self, I don't care one wit about something as abstract as "diversity" — I just want amusing and comfortable and that does not necessarily include the obligatory person of other ethnicity to assuage my sense of liberal guilt, as I don't have any. (And my god, I'm a person of other ethnicity so why the devil should I make a big deal of  it?)

(In fact if there is any one thing which I found slightly annoying about "Death and Life" (is it too soon to be finding any flaws in her work?) is the "Oh my! Aren't we liberal as we walk down the street and exchange smiles with the Italian green-grocer!" It was almost fifty years ago and she was a girl from a small town, but there is just something slightly off about the pleasures which some people find in the simple fact of other ethnicity. Being, as I said, of "other ethnicity," I don't like to see myself as part of someone else's "one from column A and two from Column B.")

The list above also includes the very specific — "short blocks" — with the unrealistic — "variety in age, condition and use." (Does that mean it is impossible to have good suburban expansion? Jacobs was far too smart to think that.) Plus, it's repetitive: #1 and # 3 say much the same thing.

Yes I'd definitely better go back and re-read the book, which will not be a chore.