Jane Jacobs Gone Horribly Horribly Wrong
Apr. 22nd, 2005 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I'm going to run a campaign set in a future asteroid belt, where the cunning bureaucrats of the Flora Trust District struggle to help the regional economies grow. It seems to me that every newly semi-independent colonial regions needs a non-mainstream economic theory, badly applied, so the people of the Trust are all ardent Jacobites, although the details of how they interpret her divine words differs from place to place (1). Each rock is treated as a semi-independent city-state and each rock, of course, has its own currency.
I guess this means I need to go reread Jacobs.
A question for those of you more familiar with her work: how are the obvious failure modes?
1: Instant background: This was in contrast to the crony capitalism and mafiya-style company feudalism back home and just popular enough to make subsidizing the colonies out in the belt worthwhile. They were isolating what they saw as an infection, without the unfortunate effects on their outstanding loans that just diappearing the Jacobites would have had.
I guess this means I need to go reread Jacobs.
A question for those of you more familiar with her work: how are the obvious failure modes?
1: Instant background: This was in contrast to the crony capitalism and mafiya-style company feudalism back home and just popular enough to make subsidizing the colonies out in the belt worthwhile. They were isolating what they saw as an infection, without the unfortunate effects on their outstanding loans that just diappearing the Jacobites would have had.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 02:50 pm (UTC)Language is like that
Date: 2005-04-22 04:29 pm (UTC)If I have to put up with people mangling the definition of "third world"[1], I am going to mangle words like "Jacobite".
1: I am aware of The Quotation's applicablity to this, yes.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 03:01 pm (UTC)Did Jacobs address the possibility of a city getting large enough that it should split into several cities, each with their own currency?
I can't quite get it formed, but you could get pseudo-Jacobism which tries to keep people trapped in their neighborhoods. Maybe people are even drafted to spend time wandering around the streets to make the place more like a city. This actually looks more possible if most shopping and work are done online. Not that it would be a good idea, but you could end up with a reasonable future where if people are left to their own choices, even high-density cities have relatively empty streets.
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Date: 2005-04-22 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 04:50 pm (UTC)Critics of import replacement sometimes wrongly characterize it as having the goal of ending importation, and rightly call that a mistake. An admirer of import replacing who swallowed this idea for some reason would soon be in trouble, so you could have a group who interpret the word of the Blessed Jacobs as an exhortation to isolationism and self-sufficiency.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 05:50 pm (UTC)They're in a somewhat sucky location as far as the technologies people in the high population regions use to get around. That should affect their import/export strategies for material goods [1]. I think that material goods can pretty consistantly get to them either faster or cheaper than they can ship goods elsewhere. I am not sure if that matters.
1: Non-physical goods are a different story. The publisher in New York really doesn't care if their new author comes from lower Manhattan or Kuiper Belt Research Station 14.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 04:16 pm (UTC)