Jane Jacobs was loved by my Sociology prof and inspired my. Jane Jacobs framed the agenda for the many Alinksy grassroots organizations in Chicago in the ‘60s.
Non-Alinsky Florence Scala first ran with the Jane Jacobs ideas in fighting the Italian Mafia profiting from the urban renewal of her neighborhood to make way for UICC. Scala lost but claimed she had a Moral Victory.
Alinskyites ridiculed the Scala satisfaction with a moral victory, claimed they could produce real victories, and they delivered. In ‘61 Urban Renewal had already started with Noble Square in the community I would move into.
The politicians (Rostenkowski) and their mafia developers (McHugh, Levin) clearly had plans to gentrify the corridor between the loop and airport.
NCO-Northwest Community Organization explicitly formed to use Alinsky methods and Jane Jacobs framework to fight Urban Renewal. It succeeded in stopping any further Urban Renewal. Like all Alinsky groups NCO fell apart as it matured. It was replaced by the anti-Alinsky Luis Gutierrez types who benefitted from gentrifying the community with white lefties from the suburbs.
"Urban renewal" in the mid-20th century gave us Cabrini-Green and similar catastrophes around the country, as well as ill-planned expressways that systematically blighted the neighborhoods they disrupted. The planners' record in American cities was awful in that period. It's fair to say that we've learned some hard lessons, and that planning today is far more sensitive to neighborhood livability issues. Jane Jacobs was one of the leaders of that reaction. Many of the iconic success stories of contemporary urban renewal are based on slowly undoing the mistakes of the 1950's-70's. The politics of this are interesting. When the subject arises, I habitually refer to "LBJ and the Great Society's plan to destroy America's cities," and I find even my liberal friends nodding in agreement.
Critical thinking sociology is an oxymoron in today’s politically correct Pre-Trump world ? Agreed?