Free Republic

Who is Jane Jacobs?

Wednesday is the 100th birthday of Jane Jacobs, the journalist and urban theorist whose 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, changed the trajectory of New York and cities everywhere. In the book, Jacobs argued that the preceding century of urban planning had essentially “arisen on a foundation of nonsense”—that the old, white men who advocated for highways and high-rises, wide streets and buildings set back from sidewalks by acres of grass, were not only clueless but were actively destroying American cities. Instead, Jacobs wrote, cities should be built with communities and street-level interaction in mind. […]...

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...

Civilization is a fragile thing. Humans thrive best in almost every way when they are able to band together in large numbers and live peaceably together. Any community helps improve the odds of survival and reproduction of the individuals within it, but the larger and more stable the society, the more those odds improve. A larger community will be better able to promote safety from outside invasion. The larger the community, the larger the pool of potential mates for each new generation, so that the genetic mixture is more likely to stay robust and varied. The larger and more...