Who was Jane Jacobs?
Jacobs was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1916 and moved to New York City in 1934. She worked as a stenographer and freelance writer, studied for two years at Columbia and was an editor at Architectural Forum from 1952. Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities attacked mid-century planning and slum clearance. She helped lead local fights against plans to renew Greenwich Village and to run a highway through Washington Square Park. In 1968 she moved to Toronto so that her sons could avoid the Vietnam draft, and she wrote on cities and economies until Dark Age Ahead in 2004. She died in Toronto in 2006.
Political views
- Her 1961 book argued that cities thrive in dense, diverse areas with easy access to services, mixed buildings and short blocks. This ran against the urban modernists.Source: encyclopedia.com
- She challenged slum clearance and large housing projects, and argued that small improvements and mixed uses make neighborhoods succeed.Source: ebsco.com
- She attacked mid-century planning, including urban renewal, for tearing down communities and separating land uses into lifeless districts.Source: encyclopedia.com
- She praised street life, describing her own block as an intricate sidewalk ballet.Source: encyclopedia.com
- She protested a 1961 plan to renew Greenwich Village and opposed Robert Moses's proposed highway through Washington Square Park.Source: encyclopedia.com
- In The Economy of Cities she argued that healthy cities enrich their regions through import replacement, and in Cities and the Wealth of Nations she called cities, not nations, the basic economic unit.Source: ebsco.com
- In Systems of Survival she described two moral codes, the commercial and the guardian, and said problems arise when people use the wrong one for their work.Source: ebsco.com
- She was arrested protesting the draft during the Vietnam War, moved to Toronto, and in The Question of Separatism (1980) backed Quebec's independence.Source: encyclopedia.com
Legacy
Jacobs changed how planners and the public think about cities, and her ideas about mixed use, short blocks and lively street life are now widely taught and cited. Admirers credit her with leading neighborhood resistance to Moses's highway plans. Critics said her research was not rigorous, and Lewis Mumford argued that in her preferred city beauty would have no place. Her later work on economics won recognition too, and Cities and the Wealth of Nations won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.