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Jane Jacobs, the urban activist whose influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities reshaped thinking about urban communities, died overnight in Toronto. Jacobs, who lived in Canada since 1968, faced down NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, arguably the most powerful man in the city at the time, in the 1960s, most famously stopping an expressway from being constructed downtown.
Wikipedia on Jacobs. A 2004 Talk of the Town New Yorker piece about a visit to NYC (she didn't think anything should happen at Ground Zero for 15-20 years). The Project for Public Spaces has a good summary of her perspectives. And Treehugger suggests that we should plant trees in her memory.
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Wow. In terms of influence on the history of NYC, Ms. Jacobs is huge. I'm surprised that there aren't more comments here given that if it were not for Jean Jacobs, all of the yuppies would be inhaling highway exhaust instead of Jamba Juice.
RIP. And we should totally take her advice about Ground Zero. She was dead on correct as usual.
RIP. And we should totally take her advice about Ground Zero. She was dead on correct as usual.
The passing of Jane Jacobs marks a sad day for planners, urbanists and lovers of cities. We may all find solace in the life of her work and the immortality of her thoughts and words. In our struggles for responsible planning and community driven cities, she will always live on. Through campaigns to improve our streets, neighborhoods, backyards and communities she will always be remembered.
In 2003, Jane Jacobs spoke out for a car-free Central Park, a fight that continues today, saying,
“I enthusiastically endorse the campaign to close Central Park’s loop drive to regular automobile traffic. We had the same sort of fight in Washington Square Park in the late 1950s and in my neighborhood here in Toronto a couple of years ago: same prediction of traffic chaos, same result of no chaos, diminished traffic counts and no counts increased elsewhere in consequence. Isn’t it curious that traffic engineers are so loath to learn something new even after repeated demonstrations?
Both in Washington Square Park and in my Toronto neighborhood we got our way by pressing for an experimental trial period. A trial, with traffic counts on the Central Park perimeter streets, will be more persuasive than any amount of talk, letter-writing, resolutions, and other endless wheel-spinning. Good luck!”
She has been an inspiration for many in this generation concerned not only with creating great, livable, walking cities, but also an environmentally sustainable living arrangement. In the Death and Life of Great Cities she talks a lot about how dense urban environments work and how they thrive (or don't) and how they are superior in many ways to car-based suburban areas. As it turns out, this is also the most energy efficient and environmentally friendly modern living arrangement.
Her work will be continued by organizations like Transportation Alternatives, Municipal Arts Society, NYC Street Renaissance, Open Plans, and many, many others. Her legacy is found not in what she built, but in what she taught us to preserve. Long after the buildings and highways that Robert Moses built have crumbled, her ideas will still be discussed, talked about and embraced by future generations.
In clearing out some of my old college books from my days at Columbia (1986-91) I came across Ms. Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and could not bear to part with it. I remember reading it for K.T. Jackson's the "History of the City of New York" class (everyone's favorite memory of CU undergrad life) and how she stood up to the old "Power Broker."
Rest in Peace Great Jane. New York City and the rest of the world is a better place because of you.
Oooh, ooh-love this from Wikipedia (especially as a GS Grad myself):
She studied at Columbia University in the School of General Studies for two years, taking courses in geology, zoology, law, political science, and economics. About the freedom to study her wide-ranging interests, she has stated:
"For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education."
Rest in Peace, Mrs. Jacobs. All New Yorkers owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
That's so sad. There's no doubt Jane Jacobs helped save New York and gave us ideals that last today. As a born and raised New York City boy, her work spoke very profoundly to me. She understood that the city is not some impersonal megalopolis to be exploited, but an intensely personal experience to be shared by everyone who lives there. She understood what Robert Moses never could: the city is the destination, not something you simply travel through.
Too bad there are no Jane Jacobs here to stand up to Ratner and Bloomberg.
Sam,
stop whining, be your own hero and join the active movements to create a more livable city.
-your guardian activist
Death and Life of Great American Cities. Required reading for anyone living in NYC (and for all posters).
'yoru guardian activist' might want to step back and realize that sam is pretty much right on the money. This country is weird nowadays and this city is weird.
The middle-class in NYC is slowly dying and part of the reason is the death of an urban life that Jane Jacobs wrote eloquently about. What's tragic is that more people will stand up 'outraged' at long lines at Trader Joes or slow Fresh Direct deliveries but few people will actually stand up and start to do something productive to help this city. Or should I say people do stand up to say something, but the oppresive 'real estate uber alles' mentality of this city kills everything off. Just look at the utter mess of the WTC site.
Jane Jacobs will be missed. She was able to do things armies of people nowadays can barely achieve.
Jane Jacobs was brilliant and will be missed. New York could use another Jane Jacobs right about now. Thankfully she leaves behind some of the best writing on cities ever put to paper.
Referring to Robert Moses as the "Parks Commissioner" is a little like calling George W. Bush the Official White House Dog Walker.
JJ provided brilliant analysis of the many failures of big government bureaucrats and liberal urban planners. She was much more free-market oriented than many of her admirers care to admit. Though before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not claiming her for the Republican party. She was a true independent and people on both sides of the fence can learn much from her observations.
You know, when I actually read her, I didn't like her ideas. I remember the part about having shopkeepers who look out for the kids on the street and eye strangers warily - that was her ideal, safe neighborhood. But didn't we all come to the city to get away from that kind of crap?
Jane Jacobs leaves a tremendous legacy in many ways comparable to Robert Moses'. Both forces started off serving the public good, but then metastasized into something else. It is unfortunate that Jane Jacobs' triumph over Moses gave rise to the selfish NIMBYism that has crippled every public works project to this day. Whenever I walk through Soho and admire the cast-iron facades Robert Moses wanted to destroy I think of her, and I do the same when I walk along the Hudson and listen to the deafening roar of the Westside Highway that Westway (a proposed tunnel that would have put the traffic underground, defeated by Jacobs-style activists) would have silenced.
Jane Jacobs did what many others could not - defeated über-bureaucrat Robert Moses. The city is better off thanks to her.
We need someone as strong as her to take on the Port Authority and LMDC. She is right and the WTC site should be left alone for 15-20 years.
Jacobs was bad for the city.
Imagine the congestion we would have if Robert Moses had not iron fisted through all the highways and bridges. It's people like Jacobs that's creating all the traffic in Manhattan. All those people that must commute from LI to Jersey must cross the local streets of the city.
Jane Jacobs spent a lot of time and energy refuting the argument that if you don't build highways the traffic would go to the local streets. Maybe in the next 10 years we'll see some data that might shed some light on this.
I'm very sad that she's gone.
Moses Supporter -- It seems you cannot grasp the very basic lessons that Moses himself could not understand -- more roadway capacity GENERATES traffic, not accomodates it.
It's not "people like Jacobs" who create traffic, it's Moses's legacy, and the City DoT, which still promotes cars over people and REAL mobility/access.
Dead right, Nola. (How often do I write that?!)
The Times put it great... she was the first liberal critic of liberal urban planning. It is odd to think that someone as reviled as (the post-war) Moses was actually thought of as a reformer, and saw himself as such until the end of his life. Instead he came to typify the John Lennon line, "You want to save humanity, but it's people that you just can't stand."
In JJ's proto-libertarianism there is wisdom for us all.
As for Moses, it is true that when he started his first project, there was a desperate need for new infrastructure. As Caro said, "The city was completely unable to meet the needs of its citizens." And Moses did do great things to remedy that, the greatest being the Triboro Bridge. However, as his unchecked power and megalomania grew, he became less concerned with the consequences of his actions. I only wish there was a Jane Jacobs on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, where members of my family lived, when Moses came through there and tossed them out into the street so he could have a highway that ran from New Jersey to Long Island.
I don't think anyone who's ever spent a sunny spring afternoon in Washington Square Park could say that JJ was bad for the city. Anyone who thinks she was can't have much love for the city, for that matter.
I live in The Annex neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto just a few blocks over from Jane Jacobs' Albany Street home.
Because you can't sign the Book of Condolence in person as you're all in NY, you can leave any messages for the Jacobs' family here at the online memorial weblog:
http://www.JaneJacobs.TYO.ca
Thanks.