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A wall of houses welcomes you into suburbia, communities James Howard Kunstler considered to be “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” Photo: ©iStockphoto.com/Michelle Junior

FEATURES The natural city • Toronto's green rooftops Beat the street • City Repair Ottawa • It’s off telework we go… Back-to-the-future urbanism • Urban planning timeline • Ode to Jane Jacobs Building up sustainability • Green technologies DEPARTMENTS • Knowledge Toolbox • Cartographer’s table • Just the facts • CG vault

Ode to Jane Jacobs
By Jackie Wallace

Despite never having been an urban planner, Jane Jacobs left an undeniable mark on the way that planners, and the public, view urban spaces. Writer, activist and urban critic, Jane Jacobs passed away on April 25, 2006, at the age of 89.

When Jacob’s first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was published in 1961 her name became immediately established among urban planners. She advocated a new vision for cities, based primarily on observations she made of her own urban surroundings: the people, spaces, smells and interactions of the community. She was a staunch enemy of urban monotony. She believed in creating "mixed-use" cityscapes, bringing together business and residence, old and new, to create vibrant, diverse and sustainable communities.

She led the charge of community-based protests against expanding expressways in Greenwich Village in New York City and in Toronto.

Jacobs was born on May 4, 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 1944, she married architect Robert Hyde Jacobs with whom she had three children. While living as a young family in New York City, Jane worked as a journalist, freelancing for the New York Herald Tribune and Vogue, and eventually became part of the staff at Architectural Forum.

Jacobs moved her family to Toronto in the shadow of the Vietnam war, and she lived there until her death. She continued to write books, such as The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), furthering her theories by investigating fundamental values in economy and society. She completed her organic approach by highlighting the dangers of unfettered progressive thinking in what would be her last book, Dark Age Ahead (2004).

In 1997, the City of Toronto sponsored a conference of hundreds of urban planners titled "Jane Jacobs: Ideas That Matter" and created the Jane Jacobs Prize, to honour citizens who contribute to the city’s vitality. She also received the Order of Canada in 1998. Jacobs is survived by two sons and a daughter.

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