In an interview on Education and Society

It sounds idyllic. So why are you taking us next into the urban environment with The Economy of Cities by Jane Jacobs, and not her most famous book?

I think everyone has heard of The Death and Life of American Cities, which changed the way we think about cities. Through that book she stopped, not single-handedly of course, the destruction of inner-city neighbourhoods by driving great highways through them. But she was also an extraordinary woman in a whole range of ways: she had very little conventional academic background, she thought for herself and she came to her own conclusions. She basically thought, which I agree with, that cities are the source of everything that’s good in life. Her argument was that cities, which in the early days were just small trading and administrative posts, generated agriculture, not vice versa; because there was a market for something if you started proper production.

So I chose this book rather than Death and Life because it is actually about something much broader – the role of cities in the whole of human history and just how critical they are. When we are feeling down we all go and buy Country Living and dream about living on an isolated farm. But actually cities are where the ideas all come from, where all the wealth comes from. They are also much more environmentally friendly because you use much less energy if you live in the city than if you live out in the countryside.

Like Michael Young, Jane Jacobs is one of my idols. And her work links into my overriding interest in the interaction between human behaviour and institutions. Although in my academic work I have focused on the labour market and education, I like Jane Jacobs because she also talks about how institutions emerge from people’s daily life.