Although I revere Jane Jacobs greatly, it is tempting to point out the idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies of her new book, "Dark Age Ahead." Her premise- that North American culture is slowly spiralling down into a castastrophic Dark Age- is fascinating at first. However, the text is riddled with anecdotes and prescriptive statements that often break up her argument into awkwardly disparate ideas. For example, while expounding on the spectacular growth of Vaughn, an industrial suburb of Toronto, she makes fairly reasonable observations of the economic and social details of its transformation. Then, for some reason, she tacks on a paragraph about a great diner that she visited while she was there. As well, there are often weird but refreshing flashbacks of the old Jane Jacobs- a self-trained urban critic that observes the city from her porch and reinterates the destructive impact of the car, the elevated expressway, urban planners and traffic engineers. Her fascination with walkable and lively neighbourhoods, mixed use, and the intimate relationship between economics and architecture is still apparent, albeit softened.

The book does have its moments. I do like the fact that she does speculate on the future of sprawl: that, maybe, people will naturally see the benefits of densification and of complexifying their neighbourhoods with new building types and mixed use. I also like the observation that there is really little that architecture can do to change a social condition: that poverty and crime can somehow be solved by an architectural sleight-of-hand.