International Perspectives | The School of Landscape Architecture and Planning Lecture Series
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A Jacobsian Critique of Léon Krier: The Case of Cayalá, Guatemala City
Léon Krier’s urban-design concepts have much in common with those of Jane Jacobs. For example, both favored walkability, street intricacy, mixed uses, face-to-face contact, and polycentricity; and both understood how successful urban design itself generates safety and security and that large-scale construction can create dangerous border vacuums. But their urban philosophies appear to clash at a fundamental level, especially in the way each believed a city achieves these outcomes. Jacobs sees a living city as essentially innovative, wherein ordinary people are largely responsible for achieving social order; while Krier argues that an ideal urban order needs to be designed in much greater detail: two approaches for achieving apparently the same outcomes. The Krier-designed city district of Cayalá, Guatemala City offers an interesting illustration in this regard.
Sanford “Sandy” Ikeda PhD is a professor of economics at Purchase College of the State University of New York, and a research associate at New York University.
Ikeda’s current research focuses on the interconnections among cities, social cooperation, and entrepreneurial development; and he is currently writing a book on the economics and social theory of Jane Jacobs. His scholarly publications have appeared in The Southern Economic Journal, The Review of Austrian Economics, Environmental Politics, The American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Cosmos + Taxis, The Independent Review, and Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines. He has contributed entries for The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (on Robert Moses) and for The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (on Jane Jacobs, rent seeking, and interventionism).
He is on the Board of Directors of The Economic Freedom Institute, Cosmos + Taxis, and The Center for the Living City. He has lectured globally and has published in Forbes and National Review Online.
Light lunch served.
Header photo courtesy International Making Cities Livable.