Author Jane Jacobs Dies at 89

NEW YORK -- 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 died in her sleep Tuesday morning at a Toronto hospital, which she entered a few days ago, according to Random House publicist Sally Marvin. Jacob's son, James, was with her at the time. The author, who would have turned 90 on May 4, had been in poor health.

A native of Scranton, Pa., Jacobs lived for many years in New York before moving to Toronto in the late 1960s. She and her husband, architect Robert Jacobs Jr., were unhappy their taxes were supporting the Vietnam War and they eventually made Canada their permanent home. Robert Jacobs died in 1996.

Her impact transcended borders. Basing her findings on deep, eclectic reading and firsthand observation, Jacobs 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.

"Death and Life," published in 1961, evolved from opposing the standards of the time to becoming a standard itself. It was taught in urban studies classes throughout North America and sold more than half a million copies. City planners in New York and Toronto were among those who cited its importance and her book became an essential text for "New Urban" communities such as Hercules, Calif., and Civano, Ariz.

Jacobs also received a number of prizes, including a lifetime achievement award in 2000 from the National Building Foundation in Washington, D.C.

With her bangs and owlish glasses, and her look of cheerful curiosity, it was easy to mistake Jacobs for an idle eccentric, the kind of woman to be found late at night in the research room of the public library.

But Jacobs was a dedicated, even iconic activist. In the 1950s, she was interrogated by the U.S. government over her loyalty to the country and in the 1960s she was arrested during protests against the Vietnam War. She successfully opposed a Toronto highway project not long after moving there and was a distinctive presence at public hearings.

Her most famous confrontation came in the early '60s, when she helped defeat a plan by New York City park commissioner Robert Moses to build an expressway through Washington Square, their rivalry immortalized in the 2004 play "Boozy." During a 2000 interview with The Associated Press, Jacobs recalled the city hearing where she first laid eyes on the mighty Moses.

"As is often the case in these hearings, the officials speak first and then they leave before they hear the opposition. So he was one of the first speakers," she said. "He was furious and he stood up there, inside the railed enclosure, and not where most speakers spoke -- outside where the public microphone was. He was privileged.

"He gripped this railing and he said, in dismissing scornfully our plan to have no more than the existing road and better not even that, he said, 'These protests are just by a bunch of, a bunch of, ... a bunch of mothers!'"

Born in 1916, Jacobs was a doctor's daughter with a compulsion to question authority, an unfortunate quality if she happened to be one of your students -- even more unfortunate if you were trying to tell her something about cities.

"One of our teachers, I guess it was the fourth grade, told me cities form because there's a waterfall around and so there is power," she recalled. "Well, I was very dubious about this and immediately told her that in our neighborhood park there was a waterfall and it had nothing to do with the city."

During the Depression, on days when job hunts went nowhere, she would invest a nickel in the subway and explore a neighborhood: the diamond district, the garment district, the meatpacking district. Soon, she made money out of her passion, writing articles for various magazines.

One of her favorite phrases was "in the real world." She continued a long tradition of American pragmatism, from Benjamin Franklin to John Dewey and William James. She believed ideas should come from experience as opposed to the other way around.

"Death and Life" emerged from her reporting. Not only did it attack canonical beliefs in city planning, it attacked such canonical figures as Moses and historian Lewis Mumford.

Jacobs thought cities suffered from an anti-city bias among planners, the romanticization of a more rural way of life. Because of this, she wrote, vital communities were being torn down simply because they were "crowded," other neighborhoods were fatally isolated and parks were being constructed without regard to their surrounding environment.

She specifically criticized Mumford, author of "The Culture of Cities," for his misguided attachment to the anti-city philosophy, and Moses for his dogmatic attachment to the automobile.

Her arguments were clearly heard. Mumford, who had praised Jacobs' magazine work as "devastatingly just," dismissed her as a "sloppy novice." Moses told her publisher, Random House, that "Death and Life" was "intemperate and inaccurate, and also libelous."

But Jacobs' book was widely praised and in her subsequent works, she examined the ideas outlined in "Death and Life" from a variety of perspectives: "Cities and the Wealth of Nations" focused on the economy; "Systems of Survival" on morals; "The Nature of Economies" on science and ecology.

Jacobs is survived by her three children, James, Edward and Mary. A native of Scranton, Pa., Jacobs lived for many years in New York before moving to Toronto in the late 1960s. She and her husband, architect Robert Jacobs Jr., were unhappy their taxes were supporting the Vietnam War and they eventually made Canada their permanent home. Robert Jacobs died in 1996.

Jacobs also received a number of prizes, including a lifetime achievement award in 2000 from the National Building Foundation in Washington, D.C.

One of the icons of the New Left (ie. post New Deal) died today. While her mark has been made, and she hasn't been making news in recent times, it's notable to pause and think what she represented.

Part of her rise came in opposing a member of the old guard Left, city planner Robert Moses. While he worked for NYC and it's fair to argue that size and reach of government related to the federal level and not local, he was part of a movement that shifted a large increase of power to government, and reduced the liberty of individuals.

When Moses had a new highway cut through the Bronx, effectively leading to it's subsequent decay, that was a scale of government intervention not often seen before. But the key is, when progressives such as Moses were able to marry city planning (increasing commerce) with activist government, they were able to make the Democrats the governing party throughout the country.

Yes, bulldozing blocks of neighborhoods takes away people's property. But as long as your ox isn't being gored, you get to drive through the redeveloped area on your way to work.

Fortunately for conservatives, something changed on the Left, and the new guard began to refute some of the old tactics, in the name of "sustainability" and other heaven on earth ideas. Activists such as Jane Jacobs took on Moses, and prevented his plan on bulldozing through a bunch of blocks in Greenwich village for a proposed Lower Manhatten expressway.

The Left eating their own helped to weaken their majority coalition, and as much as the realignment of conservatives to the GOP and Goldwater's run in 1964 helped, unless people like Jacobs tried to be more progressive than their predecessors, the Dems would still be strong, rather than just a two-coast Party.

When people here and on other similar forums advocate for a more "centrist" approach, or hoping that the Dems will run candidates who are less extreme, I say why bother? The more radically progressive the Democrats have become, the less share of the votes they get. The key, however, is not to become the party of the Robert Moseses out there, and squeeze them out into oblivion. A two Party system with two clear paths sounds like a good choice. The quote unquote moderates have had their era.

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