Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (Drawing by Rob Cowan)
Jane Jacobs was a writer, activist and influential thinker whose ideas helped reshape how cities are understood and planned.
Born in the United States in 1916, Jacobs became best known for her criticism of mid-twentieth-century urban planning and for her advocacy for lively, mixed and human-scaled neighbourhoods. Her best-known book, 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities', published in 1961, challenged the dominant planning orthodoxy of large-scale redevelopment, rigid zoning and the separation of urban functions. Drawing on observation rather than abstract theory, Jacobs argued that healthy cities require diversity of uses, density of people and what she described as “eyes on the street”. These everyday patterns of activity, she suggested, created safety, social cohesion and economic vitality.
Jacobs was also an active campaigner. She played a central role in opposing highway schemes in New York, confronting planners and politicians with a combination of evidence, eloquence and grass-roots mobilisation. She demonstrated that ordinary residents could influence the future of their cities and that the use of urban space was a political as well as a technical matter.
Later in life she moved to Canada where she continued to write about cities, economics and ethics. Her influence has shaped debates in urban design, planning policy and community activism, including in the UK. Jane Jacobs remains a vital reference point for those who argue that cities work best when they are shaped by the complex, lived realities of the people who inhabit them.
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