On Jane Jacobs (2017)

The legend of Jane Jacobs centers on the writer who revolutionized our thinking about cities with her now-classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the fearless activist who stood up to planning czar Robert Moses’s rampaging road construction, thereby saving Gotham. A recent, rather cartoonish film on the subject is even titled: Citizen Jane: The Battle for New York. It is an irresistible David vs. Goliath story with a feminist twist. Not surprisingly, she has become a secular saint in oppositional circles: “What would Jane Jacobs do?” was a graffiti at the Occupy Wall Street site. In retrospect Jacobs got many things right and many others half-right, but it may take some doing to separate one from the other, or to pry loose the contemptuous loner from the feisty, socially engaged persona. “Jane Jacobs verges on a cult figure, with Death and Life a kind of gospel, like Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book in its time, or the Bible,” writes Robert Kanigel, in the first full-sc ... Read full article.