"EXUBERANT EPISODES OF IMPORT-REPLACING"
April 27, 2006
Jane Jacobs died on Tuesday, just short of her ninetieth
birthday, her son
by her side.
The 1983 Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture program was my
first introduction
to the extraordinary intellect of Jane Jacobs. In her talk "The
Economy of
Regions," she argued for regional economic diversity,
complexity, and
interdependence. She imagined a myriad of small industries
producing for
regional markets – small industries that depended
on local materials, local
labor, local capital, local transport systems, and appropriately-scaled
technology to conduct business. She pictured the fruits
of this regional
industry spilling over to support a rich cultural life
in the city at the
hub of the region. This bustling creative energy would
then foster new
innovation and industry, filling in the "niches" of
the economy.
"Cities don't work like perpetual-motion machines.
They require constant new
inputs in the form of innovations based on human insights.
And if they are
to generate [vibrant] city regions, they require repeated,
exuberant
episodes of import-replacing, which are manifestations
of the human ability
to make adaptive imitations . . . "
In the question period following the talk, Jane Jacobs
was asked how best to
foster these regional economies. Her answer was "regional
currencies." She
called regional currencies one of the most elegant tools
for stimulating and
regulating production and trade in a region.
Bob Swann's eyes flashed and his knees trembled. He was
a staunch advocate
for local currencies. Was Jane Jacobs a partner with him
in this advocacy?
He could not wait to query her more.
He had his chance on the drive back to the airport after
the lecture,
talking eagerly about the role of regional currencies in
shaping regional
economies. We described the SHARE micro-credit program
that the Schumacher
Society had helped to launch in Great Barrington as a way
for a citizen
group to gain experience in making productive loans to
small businesses.
SHARE was our first step in an initiative to launch a local
currency.
As she got out of the car, Jane Jacobs turned to Bob and
to me and said,
"You know that $500 honorarium for speaking? Would you
take it and open a
SHARE account for me? I want to participate and so stay
informed about what
you are doing." She said it with a twinkle. She knew
how it would delight
us.
That was when I first experienced the great warmth of
spirit of Jane Jacobs.
She championed the "ideas that matter," but she
also championed the people
putting the ideas into practice. In her book "Systems
of Survival" one of
her characters describes the details of the SHARE program,
and in "Dark Age
Ahead" she points to the E. F. Schumacher Society's
work with community land
trusts as one of the positive indicators of the renewal
of American culture.
During Bob Swann's last years, as he struggled with his
health, hand written
notes from Jane Jacobs cheered him on. And unexpected phone
calls have
cheered and encouraged me.
The world has lost a great intellect. At the Schumacher
Society, in
addition, we have lost an advisory board member and a dear
friend. I can
think of no finer way to honor her than for us all to foster "exuberant
episodes of import-replacing" in our local communities.
Susan Witt
For the Board of Directors and Staff
E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
(413) 528-1737
www.smallisbeautiful.org
* * * * *
Excerpts from:
The Economy of Regions, by Jane Jacobs
Third Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, October 1983
Like most of you, I assume, I see much hope in the use
of the small and
intermediate technology Schumacher advocated. Furthermore,
small and
intermediate technology is quite as necessary, valuable,
and constructive in
the economic life of cities as it is in rural and village
life and in
currently rich countries as well as poor ones. The use
of large and
expensive capital-intensive equipment has become so mindless
and rococo that
it leads to mechanization poverty, meaning that it actually
doesn’t pay its
way in direct and indirect costs but makes us poorer. Nuclear
power plants
are an extreme example, but in principle so are many types
of equipment now
being used for agriculture.
The standard diagnosis of the trouble with supply regions, abandoned
regions, and clearance regions as well as stagnated and declining cities is
“not enough industry.” To be sure. But the standard prescription
for the
deficiency is “attract industry.” What are these industries that
can be
lured and hooked? Where do they come from and why?
For the most part they are industries that originally
developed in cities
or city regions but are no longer tethered there by localized
markets or by
everyday dependence upon multitudes of producers and services
close by…. The
very freedom of location that enables these industries
to leave city regions
for distant regions means freedom from local markets and
freedom from
symbiotic nests of other producers. Therefore, their presence
does nothing,
or little, to stimulate creation of other, symbiotic enterprises.
This
outcome becomes starkly obvious whenever these transplants
pull up stakes
and leave for yet a different location, perhaps one with
still cheaper labor
or still lower electric rates. What they leave behind when
they move are
merely economic vacuums, very different from what they
left behind
originally in the cities or city regions of their origin.
And as long as
they remain in a region with a transplant economy of this
sort, they produce
only little and only narrowly for the local economy itself.
Their markets
are distant. In effect, such transplants shape a kind of
industrialized
supply region incapable of producing amply and diversely
for its own people
and producers as well as for others….
Many of the processes at work in natural ecologies and
in our own economies
are amazingly similar. I shall mention only two, although
many other
similarities are obvious. In a natural ecology the more
niches that are
filled, the more efficiently the ecology uses the energy
it has at its
disposal and the richer it is in life and means of supporting
life. Just so
with our own economies. The more fully their various niches
are filled, the
richer they are in means for supporting life. . . .
In a natural ecology the more diversity there is, the
more stability, too,
because of what ecologists call its greater numbers of
homeostatic feedback
loops, meaning that it includes greater numbers of feedback
controls for
automatic self-correction. It is the same with our economies
. . . .
Cities are the open-ended types of economies in which
our human capacities
for open-ended economic creation are not only able to establish
new and
initially tentative little things but also to inject them
into everyday life
in a practical way. Cities don't work like perpetual-motion
machines. They
require constant new inputs in the form of innovations
based on human
insights. And if they are to generate city regions, they
require repeated,
exuberant episodes of import-replacing, which are manifestations
of the
human ability to make adaptive imitations...
Any region with an innovative and import-replacing city
of its own becomes
capable of producing amply and diversely for its own people
and producers as
well as for others, again no matter what its given natural
attributes.
* * * * *
The full text of Jane Jacobs 1983 E. F. Schumacher Society
Lecture, "The
Economy of Regions" may be purchased in pamphlet form
for $5 from the
Schumacher Society or may be read for free at the publications
section of
our web site: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/publications/jacobs_83.html
The E. F. Schumacher Society is a tax-exempt, educational
organization.
Membership donations support the Society's programs. Donations
may be made
on-line at http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/membership.html
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