As I was getting my hair cut a couple of weekends ago, I was chatting away with the barber about moving. We were in the process of moving across the porch and up the stairs into a new apartment. The woman cutting my hair was in the process of moving out of her house into a new condo.
Like the lion tamer armed with only a whip and a chair, we both had creative plans for taming the unenviable task of moving. I told her about the 80/20 rule, and our plan to identify the junk in our lives. The 80/20 rule says that 20% of our clothes we wore 80% of the time. The plan was this: Identify the 80% of the junk and declutter. I thought it was a pretty good plan, but then I heard hers.
As she had an actual move across city blocks, she was planning on boxing up everything that she didn’t think she was going to need. Then she was going to call this local non-profit, and leave the boxes on the curb. The non-profit would come by and pick up the boxes within 24 hours of the call, but according to her, not until her community had gone through it first and taken out what they needed.
I was shocked. What a remarkable plan.
The thought that your neighbors have a role in your move from one place to the next suggested that the neighborhood had a very real life of it’s own. This instantly made me think of Jane Jacobs, who Natalie and I had seen the previous summer giving a talk to a packed house at PSU. She was the author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and was in town to discuss her most recent book “The Dark Age Ahead.”
At a time when people were leaving cities for the suburbs, Jane Jacobs was talking about the amazing things that were happening in dense urban areas, and she often talked about the inherent intelligence of the local community.
According to her, the ideal formula was two parts population to a half serving of real estate. (Or as the New York Times put it: “to crowd people and activities together in a joyous urban jumble.”) In fact, while in Portland, this vibrant 88 year old woman was more excited about exploring the Farmers Market outside than discussing her book with a standing room only crowd.
We live in the densest urban area on the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle. We have short blocks, and can ride almost everywhere we need to go. In other words, we live in the urban jumble. And it is wonderful.
Jane Jacobs died last week at the age of 89. And I can’t help but think that she is in some way directly responsible for our quality of life. Thank you Ms. Jacobs, you will be missed.
