Jane Jacobs: Leading voice of the city

Perhaps the greatest thinker among city planners and architects, this wonderful woman will be dearly missed. A true 'mensch', she moved to Canada because of the Vietnam war, she fought tirelessly for the ordinary people and their style of living.

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Jane Jacobs: Leading voice of the city
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April 25 2006
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Jane Jacobs, a giant among urban critics and enthusiasts who died on Tuesday aged 89, spent her entire career fighting for one deceptively simple principle: leave the cities alone and let them develop by themselves.
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In many ways, Jacobs's tireless fight for the organic, spontaneous city - for wide sidewalks, old buildings, a mix of businesses, semi-supervised children at play, and trees - was ahead of its time.
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But in retrospect, Jacobs's message initally surfaced as a final warning, nearly coinciding with the dawn of government-sponsored neighbourhood-razing and cement-pouring. Today, her first and most important book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), reads as a tragedy of sorts: Jacobs's countless suggestions about preserving street life were ultimately ignored. Countless cities cited in her study - Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit - still wear the excesses of ill-advised renewal spending. The Back-of-the-Yards neighbourhood on Chicago's south side earned Jacobs's praise as poor but vital; today, it scarcely exists.
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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/225787b2-d491-11da-a357-0000779e2340.html