66 Facts About Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through the area of Manhattan that would later become known as SoHo, as well as part of Little Italy and Chinatown.

Jane Jacobs was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on that project.

Jane Jacobs Butzner took an immediate liking to Manhattan's Greenwich Village, which deviated some from the city's grid structure.

Jane Jacobs sold articles to the Sunday Herald Tribune, Cue magazine, and Vogue.

Jane Jacobs studied at Columbia University's School of General Studies for two years, taking courses in geology, zoology, law, political science, and economics.

Jane Jacobs became a feature writer for the Office of War Information and then a reporter for Amerika, a publication of the US State Department in the Russian language.

Jane Jacobs continued to write for Amerika after the war, while Robert left Grumman and resumed work as an architect.

Jane Jacobs was anti-communist and had left the Federal Workers Union because of its apparent communist sympathies.

On 25 March 1952, Jacobs delivered her response to Conrad E Snow, chairman of the Loyalty Security Board at the US Department of State.

Jane Jacobs left Amerika in 1952 when it announced its relocation to Washington, DC.

Jane Jacobs then found a well-paying job at Architectural Forum, published by Henry Luce of Time Inc Jane Jacobs was hired as an associate editor.

When Jane Jacobs returned to the offices of Architectural Forum, she began to question the 1950s consensus on urban planning.

In 1955, Jane Jacobs met William Kirk, an Episcopal minister who worked in East Harlem.

In 1956, while standing in for Douglas Haskell of Architectural Forum, Jane Jacobs delivered a lecture at Harvard University.

Jane Jacobs addressed leading architects, urban planners, and intellectuals, speaking on the topic of East Harlem.

In May 1958, Gilpatric invited Jane Jacobs to begin serving as a reviewer for grant proposals.

Later that year, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant to Jane Jacobs to produce a critical study of city planning and urban life in the US.

Jane Jacobs coined the terms "mixed primary uses", and "eyes on the street", which were adopted professionally in urban design, sociology, and many other fields.

Jane Jacobs painted a devastating picture of the profession of city planning, labeling it a pseudoscience.

Jane Jacobs was criticized with ad hominem attacks, being called a "militant dame" and a "housewife": an amateur who had no right to interfere with an established discipline.

Jane Jacobs continued to fight the expressway when plans resurfaced in 1962,1965, and 1968, and she became a local hero for her opposition to the project.

Jane Jacobs was arrested by a plainclothes police officer on 10 April 1968, at a public hearing during which the crowd had charged the stage and destroyed the stenographer's notes.

Jane Jacobs was accused of inciting a riot, criminal mischief, and obstructing public administration.

Jane Jacobs decided to leave the US in part because she opposed the Vietnam War, she worried about the fate of her two draft-age sons, and she did not want to continue fighting the New York City government.

Jane Jacobs quickly became a leading figure in her new city and helped stop the proposed Spadina Expressway.

Jane Jacobs had considerable influence on the regeneration of the St Lawrence neighbourhood, a housing project regarded as a major success.

Jane Jacobs became a Canadian citizen in 1974 and later, she told writer James Howard Kunstler that dual citizenship was not possible at the time, implying that her US citizenship was lost.

Jane Jacobs was an advocate of a Province of Toronto to separate the city proper from Ontario.

Jane Jacobs was selected to be an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996 for her seminal writings and thought-provoking commentaries on urban development.

Jane Jacobs never shied away from expressing her political support for specific candidates.

Jane Jacobs opposed the 1997 amalgamation of the cities of Metro Toronto, fearing that individual neighbourhoods would have less power with the new structure.

Jane Jacobs backed an ecologist, Tooker Gomberg, who lost Toronto's 2000 mayoralty race, and she was an adviser to David Miller's successful mayoral campaign in 2003, at a time when he was seen as a longshot.

Jane Jacobs was active in a campaign against a plan of Royal St George's College to reconfigure its facilities.

Jane Jacobs suggested not only that the redesign be stopped but that the school be forced from the neighbourhood entirely.

Jane Jacobs has been called "the mother of Vancouverism", referring to that city's use of her "density done well" philosophy.

Jane Jacobs died in Toronto Western Hospital aged 89, on 25 April 2006, apparently of a stroke.

Jane Jacobs is credited, along with Lewis Mumford, with inspiring the New Urbanist movement.

Jane Jacobs has been characterized as a major influence on decentralist and radical centrist thought.

Jane Jacobs discussed her legacy in an interview with Reason magazine.

The influential Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, known for his work on urban studies, acknowledged that Jane Jacobs had been prescient in attacking Moses for "replacing well-functioning neighborhoods with Le Corbusier-inspired towers".

Jane Jacobs was famous for introducing concepts such as the "Ballet of the Sidewalk" and "Eyes on the Street", a reference to what would later be known as natural surveillance.

Jane Jacobs is remembered as being an advocate for the mindful development of cities, and for leaving "a legacy of empowerment for citizens to trust their common sense and become advocates for their place".

Jane Jacobs fought an uphill battle against dominant trends of planning.

In 2008, the event spread to eight cities and towns throughout Canada, and by 2016, Jane Jacobs's Walks were taking place in 212 cities in 36 countries, on six continents.

The interpretive walks typically apply ideas Jane Jacobs identified or espoused to local areas, which are explored on foot and sometimes by bicycle.

Jane Jacobs's Toronto living room was represented, based on the one at her Albany Avenue house in The Annex, where she often spoke with noted thinkers and political leaders including Marshall McLuhan, Paul Martin, and the Queen of the Netherlands.

Jane Jacobs received the second Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum in 2000.

One of their primary differences was their opposite views, the "top down" aggressive approach practiced by Moses contrasted the "bottom up" approach practiced by Jane Jacobs that considered the community.

Since then, Jane Jacobs's ideas have been analysed many times, often in regard to the outcomes that their influences have produced.

Jane Jacobs's family's conversion of an old candy shop into a home is an example of the gentrifying trend that would continue under the influence of Jacobs's ideas.

Such arguments suggest that her ideas apply only to cities with similar issues to those of New York, where Jane Jacobs developed many of them.

Jane Jacobs advocated the abolition of zoning laws and restoration of free markets in land, which would result in dense, mixed-use neighborhoods and she frequently cited New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.

Jane Jacobs defends her positions with common sense and anecdotes.

However, even this would lead to confusion since in practice, import substitution in India and Latin America were government subsidized and mandated, whereas Jane Jacobs's concept of import replacement is a free market process of discovery and division of labor within a city.

Jane Jacobs argues that in cities trade in wild animals and grains allowed for the initial division of labor necessary for the discovery of husbandry and agriculture; these discoveries then moved out of the city due to land competition.

Jane Jacobs asserts that such an approach is colonial and hence backward, citing by example, Canada buying its skis and furniture from Norway or Norwegian-owned factories in Canada, the latter procedure being a product of Canadian tariffs designed specifically to foster such factories.

Jane Jacobs stresses the need for Montreal to continue developing its leadership of Quebecois culture, but that ultimately, such a need can never be fulfilled by Montreal's increasing tendencies toward regional-city status, tendencies foretelling economic, political, and cultural subservience to English-speaking Toronto.

Such an outcome, Jane Jacobs believed, would in the long run doom Quebec's independence as much as it would hinder Canada's own future.

Jane Jacobs concludes with her observation that the popular equating of political secession with political and economic failure is the result of the Enlightenment, which perceived nature as a force for "standardization, uniformity, universality, and immutability".

Jane Jacobs argues that it is not the nation-state, rather it is the city that is the true player in this worldwide game.

Jane Jacobs restates the idea of import replacement from her earlier book The Economy of Cities, while speculating on the further ramifications of considering the city first and the nation second, or not at all.

Jane Jacobs defines the metropolis as a city that grows beyond its political borders.

Jane Jacobs strongly encourages breakaway entrepreneurship and local investment capital to do this.

Jane Jacobs insists on the benefits of having a city-currency, which acts as a positive feedback mechanism, to help drive local innovation and import-replacement.

Jane Jacobs calls these two patterns "moral syndrome A", or commercial moral syndrome, and "moral syndrome B", or guardian moral syndrome.

Jane Jacobs's discussion focuses on "five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm", summarized as the nuclear family and community; quality in education; free thought in science; representational government and responsible taxes; and corporate and professional accountability.