Curing Slums: The Jane Jacobs Way and the Henry George Way

• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Walter Rybeck
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12108
• Date: 01 May 2015

Curing Slums: The Jane Jacobs Way and the

Henry George Way

By WALTER RYBECK*

ABSTRACT. Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both self-taught public

figures who shared an appreciation of the density, productivity,

diversity, and cultural creativity of big cities. A century separated them,

during which architects and planners designed cities according to

abstract principles, but George and Jacobs expected the creative

potential of a city to emerge from its inhabitants, not from a central

planner. Although the interests and concerns of George and Jacobs

overlapped on only a few topics, they both believed that slum dwellers

could solve their own problems, given the right tools. For Jacobs, the

solution to dilapidated housing lay not in bulldozing neighborhoods,

but in rehabilitating them through a process she called “unslumming,” a

gradual process of self-improvement that has at times been accused of

being gentrification. Henry George offered a different solution,

involving taxation of land values, one that did not focus on particular

neighborhoods and thus avoided the paradox that local improvements

would raise the price of real estate too high for local residents to stay.

An example is given of how George’s solution actually worked in the

Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. In this case, no change in

tax policy was needed to bring about a local economic renaissance in

the 1960s, merely the realignment of property assessments that

correctly reflected the actual value of land.

Introduction

Henry George, a keen observer of cities, noticed that the larger cities

grew, the wider grew the gap between its rich landowners and its

*Former reporter in West Virginia, correspondent in South America, Washington

Bureau Chief for Cox Newspapers, assistant director of the National Commission on

Urban Problems, editorial director of the Urban Institute, urban affairs assistant to two

congressmen, Henry S. Reuss of Milwaukee and William J. Coyne of Pittsburgh, and

author of Re-Solving the Economic Puzzle (2011).

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 3 (May, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12108

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C2015 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.