Autor: Byrne, Patrick H.

Buch: Beitrag zur Konferenz: World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion 7: 1-2 (March 2003)

Titel: Ecology, Economy and Redemption as Dynamic: The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan

Stichwort: Jane Jacobs; Merkmale für gesunde biologische u. ökonomische Systeme 2; Erweiterung (expansion)

Kurzinhalt: The second component in Jacobs' analysis, expansion, begins with the question, "Why don't new developments crowd old ones out?"

Textausschnitt: (2) Expansion

"Development is qualitative change. Expansion is quantitative change. The two are closely linked" (2000, 37). (Fs)

9a The second component in Jacobs' analysis, expansion, begins with the question, "Why don't new developments crowd old ones out?" From this question flows her analysis of how both biological and economic environments expand. "The most amazing demonstration of expansion is the sheer volume and weight of biomass on the earth. It expanded from nothing before life began" (43). Expansion here can mean growth in spatial extent, but more to the point, it means growth in complexity. Webs of co-developments do not merely multiply instances; they multiply differences and intertwine differences together into ever more complex systems. In this way co-developments are constantly providing new interstices and niches for still further developments. This is why old developments are not automatically crowded out. (Fs)

9b Not content, however, to merely solve the crowding problem, Jacobs offers an account of how the dynamics of expansion work. Reminiscent of the work of Ilya Prigogine, she explains that

Expansion depends on capturing and using transient energy. The more different means a system possesses for recapturing, using, and passing around energy before its discharge from the system, the larger are the cumulative consequences of the energy it receives (2000, 47 & 46). (Fs)

9c In order to illustrate her point, Jacobs contrasts desert with forest environments. Both receive comparable amounts of energy from the sun. Yet in forests
energy flow is anything but swift and simple, because the diverse and roundabout ways that the system's web of teeming, interdependent organisms uses energy. Once sunlight is captured, it's not only converted but repeatedly reconverted, combined and recombined, cycled and recycled ... Energy flow through an intricate conduit of this kind ... leaves behind, complex webs of life " (2000, 46).

9d By way of contrast, desserts have relatively few systems for capturing sunlight and converting it into forms usable by other biological systems. The lesson that she wishes to draw from this analysis is that expansion is not primarily a function of external inputs - sunlight - but rather of internal complexity.

Jacobs then turns this analysis upon the phenomena of economic growth.
I began thinking about settlements' economies as instances of natural energy-flow [and realized] that imports came in at the receiving end of their conduits, exports left at the discharge end, and the interesting question was what went on within the conduits (2000, 53). (Fs)

9e What "goes on within the conduit" is the complex interdependent patterns of working, producing, trading, and living that characterize each particular settlement. She argues that theories and policies intent upon promoting development have focussed too much upon introducing external inputs - such as large grants and loans - and too little upon existing webs of complexity and the means needed for differentiating and diversifying patterns that already exist. The result of input theories, she argues, has been devastation both of economic and natural ecologies. Here Jacobs is incorporating her earlier work on the dynamics of urban economies (1969, 1985) into the more comprehending world-view linking natural and human orders. (Fs)