Jane Jacobs was years ahead of mainstream thinking on city planning issues. She can only be described as an icon. Those of us who were busy doing other things during the fiascos of "urban redevelopment", rampant "suburbanization" and the tear-down-start-over mentality found a voice of logic and reason in her writings. Here is an excerpt of her obit from today's SF Chronicle:
If you haven't read The Death and Life of Great American Cities please put it on your summer reading list.
Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher said. Jacobs, a longtime resident of Toronto, was 89.
Jacobs, who based her findings on deep, eclectic reading and firsthand observation, challenged assumptions she believed damaged modern cities that neighborhoods should be isolated from each other, that an empty street was safer than a crowded one, that the car represented progress over the pedestrian.
Her priorities were for integrated, manageable communities, for diversity of people, transportation, architecture and commerce. She also believed that economies need to be self-sustaining and self-renewing, relying on local initiative instead of centralized bureaucracies.
"She inspired a kind of quiet revolution," her longtime editor, Jason Epstein, said Tuesday. "Every time you see people rise up and oppose a developer, you think of Jane Jacobs."
If you haven't read The Death and Life of Great American Cities please put it on your summer reading list.
- Written by Joe Baylock
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