The Jane Jacobs Century

Today marks 100 years since the birth of Jane Jacobs. Her peerless first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was published in 1961, at the height of a mistaken faith in the ‘modern’ city envisioned by utopian planners. But while Death and Life undermined that faith, it did not end it. The Jacobs centennial is an appropriate time to revisit her observations to glean lessons for going forward.

I stress “observations” because Jacobs was not ideological, nor prescriptive. She loved New York City’s Greenwich Village and successfully fought its demolition and redevelopment. It was her laboratory. But critics to the contrary, she did not advocate low-rise neighborhoods as the answer for every single place. She did not unilaterally oppose big buildings—only when they threatened to overshadow and weaken a viable urban fabric. She did not oppose big projects like mass transit, vast water works and citywide parks systems. She did not oppose roads “as long as the city is not reshaped to accommodate them,” she once told me. And she did not oppose infill redevelopment of urban areas as long as it was beneficial and appropriately scaled.