Virtual Reading Group: Seeing Cities in a New Light
Students For Liberty leaders have organized countless Virtual Reading Groups where a handful of students meet online every week for a discussion of pre-assigned readings, facilitated by an expert in the field. Dozens and dozens of students around the globe have benefitted from these collaborative explorations into important literature. Now, more than ever, these open and tolerant spaces of discourse are needed for students to dive deep into the weeds and come out on the other side having reaped mutual intelectual rewards.
Jane Jacobs, devastating critic of mid-20-century urban planning and the most famous urbanist of her generation, never held an academic position but she is a widely respected social theorist revered across a broad ideological spectrum. Jacobs refused to endorse an ideology or school of economics, but her ideas are a stimulating complement to Classical Liberal thought and to economics, especially Austrian economics. Her original and profound insights into the nature and significance of cities enrich our understanding of how economic development and spontaneous social order work. Excerpts from Jacobs’s writings and from other authors will serve as a starting point each week for an open and wide-ranging discussion. This course will change the way you see the world.