"Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth"
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Nostalgia is not just sentimental; its got a wardrobe and a thesis statement. Jane Jacobs skewers a familiar kind of prestige freeze: the thinker who keeps wearing yesterday's big idea like a well-cut suit long after it stops fitting the street. The line lands because it treats intellectual life as social performance, not pure reason. "Old intellectual excitements" arent neutral beliefs; theyre the rush of a moment when a theory felt daring, when belonging to a school of thought made you interesting, when arguing it gave you identity.
The comparison to "belles" is doing double duty. On the surface its a gently barbed analogy, but the subtext is sharper: cultures reward certain forms of aging poorly, especially for women, and Jacobs flips that scrutiny back onto men who expect their authority to age like wine. Fashion and coiffure are shorthand for public self-presentation; Jacobs is telling you that clinging to a once-glamorous framework is also a kind of styling choice, a refusal to update your look in response to changed circumstances.
Context matters because Jacobs made her career by challenging modernist planning orthodoxies that had calcified into doctrine. Mid-century urban policy was full of experts repeating the thrilling simplifications of their youth: clearance, order, efficiency, the city as machine. Jacobs implies that the danger isnt mere stodginess; its institutionalized nostalgia with consequences. When yesterday's excitement becomes today's policy, cities get treated as stage sets for someone else's remembered glamour, not as living places that require fresh attention and humility.
The comparison to "belles" is doing double duty. On the surface its a gently barbed analogy, but the subtext is sharper: cultures reward certain forms of aging poorly, especially for women, and Jacobs flips that scrutiny back onto men who expect their authority to age like wine. Fashion and coiffure are shorthand for public self-presentation; Jacobs is telling you that clinging to a once-glamorous framework is also a kind of styling choice, a refusal to update your look in response to changed circumstances.
Context matters because Jacobs made her career by challenging modernist planning orthodoxies that had calcified into doctrine. Mid-century urban policy was full of experts repeating the thrilling simplifications of their youth: clearance, order, efficiency, the city as machine. Jacobs implies that the danger isnt mere stodginess; its institutionalized nostalgia with consequences. When yesterday's excitement becomes today's policy, cities get treated as stage sets for someone else's remembered glamour, not as living places that require fresh attention and humility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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