In New York I listened to Rem Koolhaas behaving badly and blaming our inability to face up to the realities of the contemporary city on our sentimental attachment to Jane Jacobs and the rose-tinted views on street life she expounds in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Ever since the 60s, Jacobs ideas about protecting traditional neighbourhoods from planners trying to carve urban motorway through them have made her a heroine to generations of urban activists.
Is Koolhaas right? Do we have to face the reality of a new city, where community has moved elsewhere--to the computer-mediated realm? But, as an architect he must be concerned with making spaces where places can exist and flourish, even if they have the changing structure of events in the space of flows.
