Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89 - New York Times

Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89 - New York Times:

Jane Jacobs, the writer and thinker who brought penetrating eyes and ingenious insight to the sidewalk ballet of her own Greenwich Village street and came up with a book that challenged and changed the way people view cities, died today in Toronto, where she lived. She was 89.


'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' (1961)

'The Economy of Cities' (1969)

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (1992)

The Nature of Economies (2000)

Dark Age Ahead (2004)

She died at a Toronto hospital, said a distant cousin, Lucia Jacobs, who gave no specific cause of death. In her book "Death and Life of Great American Cities," written in 1961, Ms. Jacobs's enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities. At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism – in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble.

It's interesting that she lived in Toronto, a place that I associate with the some of the best architecture in the world, yet it's a very alive place, with focus on community.

Much the reverse of much of the United States. When I look at where I live, Maui, I think of Kihei as one long strip mall, where there's lots of condo's, then lots of shops, but much is separate. It doesn't seem to encourage community. Then I look at Haiku, a place where I think of it all community. It really is no better, but it has three major community attractors, and not much else. The energy gets concentrated - and that creates community.

I wonder what she would have thought of Prince Charles's Poundbury Village that seems to be one of the better thought out communities.

Good bye Jane - your influence was amazing!