Jane Jacobs
The great motor divide: How our obsession with cars has driven us apart
Transportation by private car fails the city socially, while transit’s built-in opportunities for contact and cooperation are tools we desperately need to leverage in order to learn how to live together again.
March 22, 2022
Building a Farm Where a Freeway Used To Be
A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a
gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell
Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly
two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch,
which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to
enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street,
arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.
February 9, 2010
Planetizen Unveils Its Top 100 Urban Thinkers
She may be experiencing an intellectual reconsideration in some corners, but Jane Jacobs is still a beloved figure for the urban planners and designers of Planetizen.
September 14, 2009
What Should We Learn From Moses and Jacobs?
There is probably no more beloved figure in urbanism than Jane Jacobs, who fought to preserve some of New York City's most treasured neighborhoods and who gave urbanists some of the field's fundamental texts. As Ed Glaeser notes in the New Republic this week, Jacobs died in 2006 "a cherished, almost saintly figure," while her principal antagonist, Robert Moses, remains popularly reviled as a villain.
September 9, 2009