  Sumotect Member Username: Sumotect Post Number: 184 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 64.243.32.9 |
Possibly the most important urbanist of our times has just died in her adopted home of Toronto. "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" should be required reading. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/ cs/ContentServer?pagename=thes tar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Art icle&cid=1145976509962&call_pa geid=968332188492&col=96879397 2154 | ||
Downtown_dave Member Username: Downtown_dave Post Number: 70 Registered: 07-2005 Posted From: 63.77.247.130 |
Wow - great story and proof that one person can make a difference. Similarly, it's nice to see that the passion for understanding and speaking out on our collective connectedness - the web of people, places, economies and learning - is very much alive on this forum. My guess is Jane Jacobs would be smiling about some of our debates here. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Sumotech. | ||
Rrl Member Username: Rrl Post Number: 468 Registered: 12-2003 Posted From: 71.213.228.212 |
An insightful book written by a true thinker. I'll have to dig out my copy, dust it off, and give it another read-thru. Cheers to a great life. | ||
Eastsidedog Member Username: Eastsidedog Post Number: 282 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 12.47.224.7 |
I'm reading "Death and Life" right now (it's probably influenced a few posts  ). It's an incredible detailed book. When I finished reading it, I planned on posting about it. She doesn't say many good things about Detroit.  But we're working on it! | ||
Detourdetroit Member Username: Detourdetroit Post Number: 193 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 152.163.100.8 |
RIP Jane Jacobs. I would also recommend "Dark Age Ahead", her last book. Honestly the prose isn't that amazing, but the ideas are profound and wholly appropriate for our times. 'Tis true, Jacobs pitied Detroit 50 years ago for too-wide streets and inhumanity, but it was because of Detroit that she was moved to write and make us think about our cities and what we were doing... What a wondrous and inspirational thing it would be for Detroit to become a leader in all things human and urban for the next fifty years, just as it had been a leader in all things machine and suburban for the last fifty. We can always hope. And goddamn, it's time! | ||
Ltorivia485 Member Username: Ltorivia485 Post Number: 2607 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 199.74.87.98 |
“For me,” John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto recalled, “the most significant influence was in terms of the notion that cities drive economies, not provincial or national governments.” “She’s the one who propagated the thought, and I think she’s dead right.” Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago — the 1995 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics — liked Mrs. Jacob’s theories. | ||
Swingline Member Username: Swingline Post Number: 464 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 172.128.169.183 |
"Death and Life" should be required reading for all elected politicians representing urban areas. Better yet, make it a prerequisite -- just like residency -- for eligibility to run for office in any urban area. It would be interesting, and likely kind of sad, to poll the Mayor, his Planning Department appointees and the City Council to see if any of these leaders have even heard of Ms. Jacobs. Probably the only safe bet would be Sheila Cockrel, a Monteith College and urban studies grad. | ||
Detourdetroit Member Username: Detourdetroit Post Number: 194 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 205.188.116.137 |
"Old buildings are required for new ideas." J.J. could Detroit benefit from this insight? | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 31 Registered: 04-2006 Posted From: 64.12.116.204 |
I am willing to bet that most have heard of her. She is a household name among city planners, up there with Robert Moses and Daniel Burnham. | ||
Benjamin Member Username: Benjamin Post Number: 134 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 69.63.62.185 |
For what it's worth, the e-mail I sent to some friends... Arguably the greatest female intellect of the twentieth century died the night before last in a hospital in Toronto. If she had survived but a week longer, she would have seen her ninteeth birthday, and as such I suppose it is only to be expected that she couldn't live forever, but this is still a blow to innumerable fields of study. Born in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a local doctor, she worked first at the local newspaper, and then moved to New York City during the depression, where she found work with a minor architectural periodical. She took to exploring various random corners of New York on her days off, and eventually fell in love with and moved to Grenwich Village. During the Vietnam war, she moved to Toronto, to avoid recieving draft notices for her two sons. She has always been deeply political, and never seemed to slow down. Most recently she served on the transition team that helped Toronto's mayor David Miller into office. Her writings set the terms of debate on subjects as varried as urban studies, international economics, ethics, and the origins of civilization. Her first work, the landmark Death and Life of Great American Cities, is widely regarded as among perhaps a dozen texts to have fundamentally changed the way we look at our cities, riveled only by Lewis Mumford's The City in History, Howard Ebiniser's Garden Cities of Tomorow, and a few others. Where her first work delt with cities as social entities, her second, The Wealth of Cities, dealt with cities as economic entities, as well as providing some interesting insights into the processes by which the first cities might have formed out of nomadic and semi-nomadic pre-civilized groups. Her third, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, carries foward the themes to consider how and to what extent urban proseprity affects the surrounding rural regions, as well as other cities, both proximate and distant, eventually comming to the conclusion that major metropolan areas, and not national economies, are the units we must discuss when endevoring towards universal prosperity on a global scale. Turning away from urban and economic issues, her fourth book, systems of survival attempts to ferret out the nature of that slippery subject, morality, and tackles the always-potant question: are there moral abslutes, or is everything relitive? In addition to her four greatest works, she also published The nature of Economies, judging economic growth against natural forces, and A Question of Seperatisim, in which she discussed various questions related to the bid for an independent Quebec. Her most recent work, Dark Ages Ahead, came as a blow to the chest. Our Jacobs had always been an optomist and a positivist. Even where she discussed problems - and she discussed many - she always devoted vastly more space to possible solutions, as well as existing room for hope. If there was one unifing theme to her work it was that something could always be done. That humanity would always triumph over temporary setbacks. Dark Ages Ahead felt more like a statment of resignation than a book. I had always hoped that she might live to see herself prooved wrong on the last count. Having been published when she was eighty-eight, however, that would have been unlikley in any case. Tributes seem light on the ground for a woman of such calibre. Perhaps the finest is this, from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04 /25/books/25cnd-jacobs.html?hp &ex=1146024000&en=c74b882dbb18 bb74&ei=5094&partner=homepage I do not know whether or when a public funeral is scheduled. If anyone finds out, please let me know, and I will spare no ends to attend it. This was a great woman in every sense of the word. We owe her, some would argue, our cities. Benjamin A. Vazquez, U.E. In retrospect, there are a handful of factual errors, but unimportant ones. I was distraught at the time. Benjamin A. Vazquez, U.E. | ||
Benjamin Member Username: Benjamin Post Number: 135 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 69.63.62.185 |
There is an online tribute at http://janejacobs.tyo.ca/2006/ 04/26/jane-jacobs-1916-2006/ Let's let people know we've been touched. Benjamin A. Vazquez, U.E. | ||
Erikto Member Username: Erikto Post Number: 348 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 64.228.108.32 |
There were a couple of decent articles in the Toronto Star yesterday and maybe today (Haven't read today's yet)... | ||
Eastsidedog Member Username: Eastsidedog Post Number: 288 Registered: 03-2006 Posted From: 12.47.224.7 |
I'll be going to Toronto in a couple weeks to visit friends who live Downtown. I hope to visit the Annex neighborhood and go by her house (what a cool house, reminds me of West Village a bit!). I will also try to go by Dooney's Cafe and sign the book of condolences. Of course I will proudly put that I'm from Detroit. Yeah, we've got a lot of work to do here, her book Death and Life has really got me thinking... | ||
Benjamin Member Username: Benjamin Post Number: 136 Registered: 10-2003 Posted From: 69.63.62.185 |
Bump |
