Jane Jacobs

The opponents of New York University's controversial expansion plan for Greenwich Village owe their recent court victory to the legacy of Jane Jacobs' legendary fight against the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway.

January 11, 2014 - The New York Times

At least one Hanukah song is easily adaptable by urbanists.

November 29, 2013 - Michael Lewyn

If Jane Jacobs's theory that face-to-face encounters make for better cities is correct, a new metric that measures the ability of a city to encourage random social interactions could prove essential in shaping urban policy.

May 30, 2013 - Fast Company Co.Exist

A rambling walk through New York City, with no destination in mind, reveals to FT columnist John Kay the value of unplanned social interactions - a value that's behind Yahoo’s recent policy limiting telecommuting.

March 27, 2013 - The Financial Times

In the fifty years since Jane Jacobs introduced the "eyes on the street" theory, it's become a commonly accepted conceit that a mix of use reduces crime. A new study calls that theory into question.

February 28, 2013 - Next City

Fifty years after Jane Jacobs published her seminal book, "her vision of urban change [has] won the day," says Inga Saffron. Though her vision of physical diversity has prevailed, "that vision is also giving us a new kind of sterility."

February 15, 2013 - The New Republic

The old cool: Sealing yourself inside suburban air conditioning. The new cool? According to Howard Blackson, it's the joy to be found outside, connecting with one another and the world we share.

January 22, 2013 - PlaceShakers

"The Nation’s" longtime architecture critic and author of the classic, "Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back" passed away Nov. 5. In her obituary, Preston Shiller contrasts her with another "Jane" - Jacobs.

December 16, 2012 - The Nation

In a recent paper, urban theorist Stephen Marshall rehashes Jane Jacobs's criticism of city planning as a pseudoscience built "on a foundation of nonsense." Can science and design be reconciled to provide planning a more stable foundation?

December 7, 2012 - Scientific American

James Trainor looks back at the history of New York's "adventure playgrounds" of the 1960s and 70s, tracing their origin back to the original Central Park dust-up between Robert Moses and local housewives.

June 30, 2012 - CABINET

To some, "the suburbs" mean bland neighborhoods outside of a vibrant city life. But demographic and land-use changes are making Lakis Polycarpou and others rethink the definitions of "urban" and "suburban."

June 28, 2012 - POLIS

Can a "munching tour" along "an auto-focused commercial strip of tattered, 1970s-era Americana 5 miles from downtown" Charlotte help redefine what "urbanism" in 21st-century America means for Mary Newsom?

May 30, 2012 - Citiwire.net

On the anniversary of Jane Jacobs birth 96 years ago, Anthony Flint explores the striking similarities between the planning doyenne and anti-planning agitators.

May 5, 2012 - Better! Cities & Towns

There is a certain irony in community stalwarts in testy Greenwich Village wanting to have the stale housing slabs hovering over the bland park composing Washington Square Village declared an architectural landmark that will somehow thwart New York University from overdeveloping further the singular super block. “Fugataboutit,” would be a relative polite New Yorker’s observation by anyone who has ever been to this dance before, as I have. The plea is really just a feint to get the retro-redevelopment realists involved into a backroom of one of the proposal’s big buck backers to splice and dice the project so it can be swallowed by all without choking to a political death.  

April 11, 2012 - Sam Hall Kaplan

Fortune has re-published a provocative essay by Jane Jacobs, originally published in the magazine in 1958, as large scale urban renewal projects were taking off in cities across the country.

March 10, 2012 - CNN/Money

1961 marked an extraordinary year for urbanism, with the publication of Death and life of Great American Cities, and also foreshadowed two other intellectual and social revolutions led by women: environmentalism and feminism.

December 27, 2011 - California Planning & Development Report

December 15, 2011 - Michael Mehaffy

Roberta Brandes Gratz writes that "When we talk about strategies for city growth and economic development, women aren't often offered seats at the table." Jacobs was the exception, and represented a challenge to male-dominated planning.

November 18, 2011 - The Atlantic Cities

Anthony Flint looks at the legacy of Jane Jacobs upon the 50th anniversary of the release of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

November 14, 2011 - The Boston Globe

Elizabeth Farrelly poses that as we get more connected via the internet and social networking, the female traits of connectivity and relationship-building are ascendant and may mean a new feminine paradigm for city-building.

September 18, 2011 - The Age