Who is Jane Jacobs?
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Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to understanding, organizing, designing, and building cities. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 best-seller, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and her later books introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve, and succeed or fail that now seem like common sense to today’s architects, planners, politicians, and activists.

Jacobs saw cities as ecosystems with their own dynamics that would evolve over time according to how they were used. With a keen eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design, and self-organization. She promoted higher density, short blocks, local economies, and mixed uses. Jacobs helped derail the car-centred approach to urban planning in both New York City and Toronto, invigorating neighbourhood activism by helping stop the expansion of expr