Jane Jacobs

Journalist, Author, Activist

May 4, 1916 Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States

April 25, 2006 Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Robert jacobs

Jane Jacobs was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist. In her ground-breaking book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of most city-dwellers and introduced sociology concepts such as "eyes on the street" and "social capital’. She mobilized public opinion to protect existing neighborhoods from "slum clearance" and vehemently opposed Robert Moses in his plans to overhaul her neighborhood of Greenwich Village. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through Washington Square. After moving to Canada, she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toronto planned and under construction. As a mother and a female writer who criticized experts in the male-dominated field of urban planning, she was ridiculed as a "housewife" and a "crazy dame.” She was accused of being insensitive to racial inequalities apparent in the slums she advocated the preservation of older buildings because their lack of economic value made them affordable for poor people. Although her ideas of planning were praised at times as universal they were criticized as inapplicable to cities in the Third World.