L
lonestartor
Guest
The Economist magazine has an obituary for Jane Jacobs in this week's edition.
It can be read on the economist.com website.
It can be read on the economist.com website.
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C
cdl42
Guest
Thanks for the heads-up, lonestartor.
Praise be Google News!
Obituary
Jane Jacobs
May 11th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Jane Jacobs, anatomiser of cities, died on April 24th, aged 89
AT THE age of 12, nose pressed to the window of the bus, a small, naughty girl from Scranton, Pennsylvania had her first sight of New York. There was no fanfare as she swept, on that day in 1928, out of the Holland Tunnel and into Wall Street at lunchtime, but in her mind there should have been. The density of the streets, the noise and the rush of people, astonished her. Though she did not live in New York until six years later, she had fallen in love with the complexity of city life.
At the same moment, elsewhere in the city in other people's heads, plans were incubating for something quite different. New York was to be modern, increasingly vertical, the old neighbourhoods scraped and smashed away, and bold new expressways built to speed the traffic through. Once she had settled in Greenwich Village in 1955, Jane Jacobs found herself at battle stations with Robert Moses, New York's master-builder, James Felt of the City Planning Commission, Lewis Mumford, the guru of garden cities, and various mayors. Mumford, at first encouraging, became the rudest, calling her “Mother Jacobs†and comparing her to a quack.
To Mrs Jacobs cities were living beings, functioning much like a body in which the streets were arteries and veins. They grew organically, as one sort of work differentiated into others, and the constant flow of innovation kept them alive and expanding. Bluntly (for she had a tart tongue, lubricated with cigarettes and beer), she dismissed “the primacy of agriculture†in human history. Cities had come first, as the natural eco-system of human beings, and only once the web of work and trade had reached a certain size was there any need for the help of the static, primitive and muddy countryside.
For some years her own ecosystem was centred on 555 Hudson Street, in the West Village, where she and her family lived above a sweetshop. From there she surveyed a proper urban scene: the shopkeeper opposite hanging out his coils of wire, high-school children dropping wrappers on the street, the tailor retiring at midday to water his plants, Irish longshoremen swaying home from the White Horse Tavern. In this urban “ballet†she played her own part by leaving her keys with Joe Cornacchia at the delicatessen, taking her rubbish out to the kerb (“my little clangâ€) or simply watching, from the window, as everyone else went past.
This picture formed her distinctive philosophy of cities, and her clarion-call against the 20th-century wreckers. Cities should be densely peopled, since density meant safety; old buildings should rub up against new, and rich against poor; zoning should be disregarded, so that people lived where their jobs were; cars should not be banned, but walking encouraged, on pavements made wide enough for children to play. Streets should be short, so that people were obliged to experiment and explore and have the fun of turning new corners, just as she had done when hunting for jobs and apartments in her first months in New York.
Walking with Franklin
The book in which these thoughts appeared, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities†(1961), was among the most influential and controversial of the 20th century. It stopped America's urban renewal movement in its tracks, to the utter fury of Moses, Felt, Mumford and the rest. Mrs Jacobs, for all her academic-looking fringe and glasses, had no credentials save her high-school diploma, a vivid way of writing and a passion that twice got her arrested, once for incitement to riot, as she fought her victorious campaign to keep the Lower Midtown Expressway at bay. She was just a loud, determined outsider who had worked out her own ideas.
Her own ventures into urban development—six-storey walk-ups in nondescript brick, which she fought for both in New York and in Toronto, where she lived from 1968—were crisply condemned by the modernisers as “obsolete†and “unmarketableâ€. She was accused of nimbyism and blamed for gentrification, but no one was more disappointed than she was to discover, in the 1990s, that she could no longer afford to live on Hudson Street.
Over the years, her themes became grander: the growth of civilisations, the wealth of nations, moral behaviour, all with cities at their core. Her last book, “Dark Age Aheadâ€, lamented the loss of interdependence in society. Though she hated top-down planning and approved of markets, as any city-lover should, pink-tinted Canada proved more congenial both to writing and to campaigning. The government listened to her, as the rulers of New York had only ever half done.
Not just the workings of cities, but of things in general were a lasting fascination to her. In Scranton, a sooty mining town, she was miserable when the locomotives were fitted with iron skirts that hid how the wheels and pistons moved. On walks all through her life she would converse in imagination with her hero, Benjamin Franklin, explaining to that great inventor the gadgets of the modern age. “I used to tell himâ€, she said, “how traffic lights worked.†And doubtless, too, how vital it was to get a good crowd gathering, the cars flowing, the storemen shouting, the children playing, the whole economy expanding, from its centre in city life.
Praise be Google News!
Obituary
Jane Jacobs
May 11th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Jane Jacobs, anatomiser of cities, died on April 24th, aged 89
AT THE age of 12, nose pressed to the window of the bus, a small, naughty girl from Scranton, Pennsylvania had her first sight of New York. There was no fanfare as she swept, on that day in 1928, out of the Holland Tunnel and into Wall Street at lunchtime, but in her mind there should have been. The density of the streets, the noise and the rush of people, astonished her. Though she did not live in New York until six years later, she had fallen in love with the complexity of city life.
At the same moment, elsewhere in the city in other people's heads, plans were incubating for something quite different. New York was to be modern, increasingly vertical, the old neighbourhoods scraped and smashed away, and bold new expressways built to speed the traffic through. Once she had settled in Greenwich Village in 1955, Jane Jacobs found herself at battle stations with Robert Moses, New York's master-builder, James Felt of the City Planning Commission, Lewis Mumford, the guru of garden cities, and various mayors. Mumford, at first encouraging, became the rudest, calling her “Mother Jacobs†and comparing her to a quack.
To Mrs Jacobs cities were living beings, functioning much like a body in which the streets were arteries and veins. They grew organically, as one sort of work differentiated into others, and the constant flow of innovation kept them alive and expanding. Bluntly (for she had a tart tongue, lubricated with cigarettes and beer), she dismissed “the primacy of agriculture†in human history. Cities had come first, as the natural eco-system of human beings, and only once the web of work and trade had reached a certain size was there any need for the help of the static, primitive and muddy countryside.
For some years her own ecosystem was centred on 555 Hudson Street, in the West Village, where she and her family lived above a sweetshop. From there she surveyed a proper urban scene: the shopkeeper opposite hanging out his coils of wire, high-school children dropping wrappers on the street, the tailor retiring at midday to water his plants, Irish longshoremen swaying home from the White Horse Tavern. In this urban “ballet†she played her own part by leaving her keys with Joe Cornacchia at the delicatessen, taking her rubbish out to the kerb (“my little clangâ€) or simply watching, from the window, as everyone else went past.
This picture formed her distinctive philosophy of cities, and her clarion-call against the 20th-century wreckers. Cities should be densely peopled, since density meant safety; old buildings should rub up against new, and rich against poor; zoning should be disregarded, so that people lived where their jobs were; cars should not be banned, but walking encouraged, on pavements made wide enough for children to play. Streets should be short, so that people were obliged to experiment and explore and have the fun of turning new corners, just as she had done when hunting for jobs and apartments in her first months in New York.
Walking with Franklin
The book in which these thoughts appeared, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities†(1961), was among the most influential and controversial of the 20th century. It stopped America's urban renewal movement in its tracks, to the utter fury of Moses, Felt, Mumford and the rest. Mrs Jacobs, for all her academic-looking fringe and glasses, had no credentials save her high-school diploma, a vivid way of writing and a passion that twice got her arrested, once for incitement to riot, as she fought her victorious campaign to keep the Lower Midtown Expressway at bay. She was just a loud, determined outsider who had worked out her own ideas.
Her own ventures into urban development—six-storey walk-ups in nondescript brick, which she fought for both in New York and in Toronto, where she lived from 1968—were crisply condemned by the modernisers as “obsolete†and “unmarketableâ€. She was accused of nimbyism and blamed for gentrification, but no one was more disappointed than she was to discover, in the 1990s, that she could no longer afford to live on Hudson Street.
Over the years, her themes became grander: the growth of civilisations, the wealth of nations, moral behaviour, all with cities at their core. Her last book, “Dark Age Aheadâ€, lamented the loss of interdependence in society. Though she hated top-down planning and approved of markets, as any city-lover should, pink-tinted Canada proved more congenial both to writing and to campaigning. The government listened to her, as the rulers of New York had only ever half done.
Not just the workings of cities, but of things in general were a lasting fascination to her. In Scranton, a sooty mining town, she was miserable when the locomotives were fitted with iron skirts that hid how the wheels and pistons moved. On walks all through her life she would converse in imagination with her hero, Benjamin Franklin, explaining to that great inventor the gadgets of the modern age. “I used to tell himâ€, she said, “how traffic lights worked.†And doubtless, too, how vital it was to get a good crowd gathering, the cars flowing, the storemen shouting, the children playing, the whole economy expanding, from its centre in city life.
A
adma
Guest
A real subversive Jane Jacobs ref in this week's Sasha sex column in Eye...
O
Observer Walt
Guest
I haven't seen this on the forum and hope it isn't a duplicated post.
A free public celebration of the life and work of urban visionary Jane Jacobs, who died in April, will take place tonight [Mon. June 12] at 7:30 p.m. at Trinity St. Paul's Church, 427 Bloor St. W. Among those in attendance who will offer reflections and read from her work are John Sewell, Anne-Marie MacDonald, Ken Greenberg, and Max Allen.
A free public celebration of the life and work of urban visionary Jane Jacobs, who died in April, will take place tonight [Mon. June 12] at 7:30 p.m. at Trinity St. Paul's Church, 427 Bloor St. W. Among those in attendance who will offer reflections and read from her work are John Sewell, Anne-Marie MacDonald, Ken Greenberg, and Max Allen.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From Canadian Architect:
Jane, We Miss You Terribly
By: Ken Greenberg
On April 25,2006, Jane Jacobs Passed Away in Toronto, Just One Week Shy of Her 90th Birthday. in This Article, Some of Her Lifelong Pursuits are Discussed and Celebrated.
Jane Jacobs was never reticent about acknowledging aging and death as part of life and renewal. The titles of her 1961 masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and her last book, Dark Age Ahead, are straightforward about these issues. Her broad reading of history, economics, environment, and culture is all about the ascending and receding patterns of fragility and durability. Jacobs reminds us matter-of-factly that things do go wrong, that there are historical dead ends, that countries, whole civilizations, and even cities can and do atrophy and even disappear.
Lacking formal education in city planning or journalism (her entrée into the cities question), Jacobs came equipped with remarkable powers of observation and a deep curiosity about how things work. These combined with a passionate advocacy and profound indignation impelled her to write The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, a brilliant response to Robert Moses' plans to eviscerate Lower Manhattan and, more generally, to the widespread devastation wrought by bad urban renewal visited on postwar cities by the planning and design establishments.
Jacobs' motivation was always to unmask unhelpful dogma, to debunk myths, and to show that there are other modes of thought. Her arguments in Death and Life were built from the ground up, with in-depth observations of everyday places--streets, blocks, parks, and buildings. Her appreciation for complex "self-organizing" survival mechanisms was coupled with frustration with the kind of institutional wrong-headedness--bureaucratic, political, and pseudo-scientific--that impedes the creative process of human adaptation.
She followed that historic book with explorations of the economic underpinnings of cities, trade, import replacement, and the generation of wealth in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (1984); of the ethical underpinnings of the commercial and guardian structures in Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (1992); and of the great synthesis of economic, social and natural systems in The Nature of Economies (2000) and Dark Age Ahead (2004). With each iteration, the tapestry of Jacobs' ideas and concepts became stronger, denser.
Jacobs moved to Toronto with her family in 1968. New Yorkers remember her best as an historic figure from the epic struggles of the 1960s, but for us she became a remarkably accessible neighbour and friend for four decades. The city was hanging on a cliff when she arrived, poised for the full program of anti-city urban renewal measures. Major demolitions were planned for such treasures as Old City Hall, Union Station and St. Lawrence Market, along with downtown neighbourhoods such as the area south of the high-rise St. Jamestown urban renewal project. Toronto's streetcars were slated for removal and more urban expressways were on deck--not just the infamous Spadina Expressway, but also those intended for Crosstown and Scarborough.
On November 1, 1969, Jacobs told Toronto's Globe and Mail: "As a relatively recent transplant from New York, I am frequently asked whether I find Toronto sufficiently exciting. I find it almost too exciting. The suspense is scary. Here is the most hopeful and healthy city in North America, still unmangled, still with options. Few of us profit from the mistakes of others, and perhaps Toronto will prove to share this disability. If so, I am grateful at least to have enjoyed this great city before its destruction."
The remarkable thing was that Jacobs' ideas almost immediately resonated. Armed with her closely observed truths and empirical evidence, city advocates were able to challenge a still potent set of anti-urban values and pervasive imagery whose twin origins and credentials can be traced back to two great 20th-century crusades against the city by Frank Lloyd Wright (Broadacre City) and by Le Corbusier (The Radiant City). In contrast to these, Jacobs demonstrated that there were sophisticated processes at work in the city as a perpetually unfinished, intensely interactive web of relationships. She applied the concepts of organized complexity, self-organization, and mix and diversity to explain what was wrongly perceived as chaos.
By the 1970s and '80s, new medium-density mid-rise infill developments emerged, along with mixed-use developments. Affordable housing started to appear on scattered sites. Industrial lofts and converted office buildings then led the way, as downtown itself became more of a neighbourhood. And then, there was the condo boom--unfortunately more about quantity than quality. But still, with a mix of successes and partial successes, Toronto produced one of the most vibrant lived-in city centres on the continent. A great testament to Jacobs' teachings was the "Kings" initiative, in which the city allowed 400 acres in former industrial districts flanking downtown to develop organically, eschewing traditional land-use controls for an organic and self-defining mix of uses and simple building form controls.
"Toronto the Dull" began to be "Toronto the More Interesting" as neighbourhood streets came to life. Gradually, the city relearned how to make urban buildings and spaces, framing its streets with pedestrian-friendly building edges and active uses, occasionally producing contemporary buildings particular to Toronto and very different from the sentimental pastiche of historic styles so often seen in the US. It became denser without destroying its neighbourhoods. Jacobs admonished us to not be afraid of "density" (an abstraction), but to see how it could be introduced while strengthening the grain and structure of the city.
The web of ideas that Jacobs provided has continued to provide credibility, inspiration, and guidance for my own and subsequent generations. She was the scientist and we were the engineers finding new ways to test and apply her concepts. It was one thing to articulate these ideas but quite another to make real change in the way the city works. Jacobs was very sparing in her public appearances and pronouncements, yet gradually and almost imperceptibly, her ideas came close to being conventional wisdom both in her adopted city of Toronto and in many other places as a loosely integrated but coherent philosophy through a process of infiltration and testing.
Now things have evolved and while some of the old battles have been won, cities are struggling with a whole new series of challenges--lack of resources and inability to provide services, political powerlessness, environmental degradation, demographic shifts and development pressures within the city and seemingly unstoppable sprawl without. Perhaps not surprisingly, some critics (even somewhat sympathetic ones) have seen these new realities as signalling a limit to the usefulness or applicability of the Jacobs approach and revealing her fallibility, as if her thinking were limited to the time and place that spawned her seminal works. This was echoed in a recent article by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff in "Outgrowing Jane Jacobs and Her New York," April 30, 2006.
Jacobs' focus in recent years stretched from the neighbourhood to the nation, having developed a complex relationship with national, provincial, and municipal leaders at the highest levels in Canada, even if they found many of her partial prescriptions indigestible. What she forcefully advocated was no more and no less than a reframing of our national politics, reflecting the grudging recognition that we are now undeniably an urban country whose future hinges on the success of our cities. Jacobs had repeatedly called for new sources of funding for cities (including a portion of the gas tax) and for giving cities greater autonomy, initiatives which are being advanced even if making the rhetoric a reality is proving challenging in the face of inertia and competing political dynamics.
In a similar vein, Jacobs had begun to advance an intriguing prediction about how seemingly relentless sprawl may ultimately be resolved. Suburbia has always seemed to be the phenomenon most impervious to Jacobs' influence. Even as downtowns added significant numbers and appeared to be newly popular with a growing cohort of the population--and notwithstanding sometimes heroic "new urbanist" efforts beyond the city core--the advancing wave of low-density suburbs has pushed on unabated.
The suburban paradigm has proven to be the hardest nut to crack, and in Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs offered a fascinating new theory rooted in a longer historical trajectory. Along with slum clearance and rent control, one of the most significant housing remedies to emerge from the Depression and the Second World War was the availability of long-term low interest rates. Coupled with a number of other factors, including, in the US, the Interstate Highway program and red-lining (making some urban neighbourhoods ineligible for loans), and the fact that by 1945 only as little as three percent of the population was needed for agriculture, an irresistible pressure was created for sprawl.
Sprawl is still powerful and hard to resist, but what if it were less wasteful and the land more intensively used? In other words, what if there was another evolution in urban thinking and the current first-tier suburbs could become like early species in natural plant succession--an interim, phase-in succession leading to denser and more sustainable patterns in the future?
Beyond the house, suburban roads also have the potential to be transformed into multi- purpose urban streets, the arterials converted into boulevards shared with transit and cycle lanes. In fact, the groundwork is already laid for all this, and pioneering examples exist in many cities. The major impediment is an extraordinary tangle of intractable rules. Jacobs predicted that with an economic and demographic force majeure, these obstacles would be swept away to allow ingenuity and necessity to operate.
There would need to be real pressure to make this revolution both feasible and necessary. It would need to be deeply rooted in the raw power of a demographic force or an economic imperative like the rising cost of energy. Like the natural processes of urban "unslumming," diversification, and "import replacement" that she previously examined, she was laying the groundwork so that when the time comes, the ideas are in place. This is a classic Jane Jacobs kind of argument. Could it be wrong? Might something else happen? By knowing that it might happen--and to some limited extent it is happening already--we are better prepared to effect changes with more grace and less harm.
Jane, it is so hard to say goodbye. The unique gifts you brought us are of incalculable value--your insatiable curiosity and generosity of spirit, the twinkle in your eye, your unrelenting gaze and challenge when things didn't make sense, and the way of asking far more questions than providing answers. We were indeed privileged to have you with us. Now we must carry on by ourselves.
Ken Greenberg is an architect and urban designer based in Toronto. He has worked on downtowns, waterfronts and neighbourhoods around the world.
AoD
Jane, We Miss You Terribly
By: Ken Greenberg
On April 25,2006, Jane Jacobs Passed Away in Toronto, Just One Week Shy of Her 90th Birthday. in This Article, Some of Her Lifelong Pursuits are Discussed and Celebrated.
Jane Jacobs was never reticent about acknowledging aging and death as part of life and renewal. The titles of her 1961 masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and her last book, Dark Age Ahead, are straightforward about these issues. Her broad reading of history, economics, environment, and culture is all about the ascending and receding patterns of fragility and durability. Jacobs reminds us matter-of-factly that things do go wrong, that there are historical dead ends, that countries, whole civilizations, and even cities can and do atrophy and even disappear.
Lacking formal education in city planning or journalism (her entrée into the cities question), Jacobs came equipped with remarkable powers of observation and a deep curiosity about how things work. These combined with a passionate advocacy and profound indignation impelled her to write The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, a brilliant response to Robert Moses' plans to eviscerate Lower Manhattan and, more generally, to the widespread devastation wrought by bad urban renewal visited on postwar cities by the planning and design establishments.
Jacobs' motivation was always to unmask unhelpful dogma, to debunk myths, and to show that there are other modes of thought. Her arguments in Death and Life were built from the ground up, with in-depth observations of everyday places--streets, blocks, parks, and buildings. Her appreciation for complex "self-organizing" survival mechanisms was coupled with frustration with the kind of institutional wrong-headedness--bureaucratic, political, and pseudo-scientific--that impedes the creative process of human adaptation.
She followed that historic book with explorations of the economic underpinnings of cities, trade, import replacement, and the generation of wealth in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (1984); of the ethical underpinnings of the commercial and guardian structures in Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (1992); and of the great synthesis of economic, social and natural systems in The Nature of Economies (2000) and Dark Age Ahead (2004). With each iteration, the tapestry of Jacobs' ideas and concepts became stronger, denser.
Jacobs moved to Toronto with her family in 1968. New Yorkers remember her best as an historic figure from the epic struggles of the 1960s, but for us she became a remarkably accessible neighbour and friend for four decades. The city was hanging on a cliff when she arrived, poised for the full program of anti-city urban renewal measures. Major demolitions were planned for such treasures as Old City Hall, Union Station and St. Lawrence Market, along with downtown neighbourhoods such as the area south of the high-rise St. Jamestown urban renewal project. Toronto's streetcars were slated for removal and more urban expressways were on deck--not just the infamous Spadina Expressway, but also those intended for Crosstown and Scarborough.
On November 1, 1969, Jacobs told Toronto's Globe and Mail: "As a relatively recent transplant from New York, I am frequently asked whether I find Toronto sufficiently exciting. I find it almost too exciting. The suspense is scary. Here is the most hopeful and healthy city in North America, still unmangled, still with options. Few of us profit from the mistakes of others, and perhaps Toronto will prove to share this disability. If so, I am grateful at least to have enjoyed this great city before its destruction."
The remarkable thing was that Jacobs' ideas almost immediately resonated. Armed with her closely observed truths and empirical evidence, city advocates were able to challenge a still potent set of anti-urban values and pervasive imagery whose twin origins and credentials can be traced back to two great 20th-century crusades against the city by Frank Lloyd Wright (Broadacre City) and by Le Corbusier (The Radiant City). In contrast to these, Jacobs demonstrated that there were sophisticated processes at work in the city as a perpetually unfinished, intensely interactive web of relationships. She applied the concepts of organized complexity, self-organization, and mix and diversity to explain what was wrongly perceived as chaos.
By the 1970s and '80s, new medium-density mid-rise infill developments emerged, along with mixed-use developments. Affordable housing started to appear on scattered sites. Industrial lofts and converted office buildings then led the way, as downtown itself became more of a neighbourhood. And then, there was the condo boom--unfortunately more about quantity than quality. But still, with a mix of successes and partial successes, Toronto produced one of the most vibrant lived-in city centres on the continent. A great testament to Jacobs' teachings was the "Kings" initiative, in which the city allowed 400 acres in former industrial districts flanking downtown to develop organically, eschewing traditional land-use controls for an organic and self-defining mix of uses and simple building form controls.
"Toronto the Dull" began to be "Toronto the More Interesting" as neighbourhood streets came to life. Gradually, the city relearned how to make urban buildings and spaces, framing its streets with pedestrian-friendly building edges and active uses, occasionally producing contemporary buildings particular to Toronto and very different from the sentimental pastiche of historic styles so often seen in the US. It became denser without destroying its neighbourhoods. Jacobs admonished us to not be afraid of "density" (an abstraction), but to see how it could be introduced while strengthening the grain and structure of the city.
The web of ideas that Jacobs provided has continued to provide credibility, inspiration, and guidance for my own and subsequent generations. She was the scientist and we were the engineers finding new ways to test and apply her concepts. It was one thing to articulate these ideas but quite another to make real change in the way the city works. Jacobs was very sparing in her public appearances and pronouncements, yet gradually and almost imperceptibly, her ideas came close to being conventional wisdom both in her adopted city of Toronto and in many other places as a loosely integrated but coherent philosophy through a process of infiltration and testing.
Now things have evolved and while some of the old battles have been won, cities are struggling with a whole new series of challenges--lack of resources and inability to provide services, political powerlessness, environmental degradation, demographic shifts and development pressures within the city and seemingly unstoppable sprawl without. Perhaps not surprisingly, some critics (even somewhat sympathetic ones) have seen these new realities as signalling a limit to the usefulness or applicability of the Jacobs approach and revealing her fallibility, as if her thinking were limited to the time and place that spawned her seminal works. This was echoed in a recent article by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff in "Outgrowing Jane Jacobs and Her New York," April 30, 2006.
Jacobs' focus in recent years stretched from the neighbourhood to the nation, having developed a complex relationship with national, provincial, and municipal leaders at the highest levels in Canada, even if they found many of her partial prescriptions indigestible. What she forcefully advocated was no more and no less than a reframing of our national politics, reflecting the grudging recognition that we are now undeniably an urban country whose future hinges on the success of our cities. Jacobs had repeatedly called for new sources of funding for cities (including a portion of the gas tax) and for giving cities greater autonomy, initiatives which are being advanced even if making the rhetoric a reality is proving challenging in the face of inertia and competing political dynamics.
In a similar vein, Jacobs had begun to advance an intriguing prediction about how seemingly relentless sprawl may ultimately be resolved. Suburbia has always seemed to be the phenomenon most impervious to Jacobs' influence. Even as downtowns added significant numbers and appeared to be newly popular with a growing cohort of the population--and notwithstanding sometimes heroic "new urbanist" efforts beyond the city core--the advancing wave of low-density suburbs has pushed on unabated.
The suburban paradigm has proven to be the hardest nut to crack, and in Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs offered a fascinating new theory rooted in a longer historical trajectory. Along with slum clearance and rent control, one of the most significant housing remedies to emerge from the Depression and the Second World War was the availability of long-term low interest rates. Coupled with a number of other factors, including, in the US, the Interstate Highway program and red-lining (making some urban neighbourhoods ineligible for loans), and the fact that by 1945 only as little as three percent of the population was needed for agriculture, an irresistible pressure was created for sprawl.
Sprawl is still powerful and hard to resist, but what if it were less wasteful and the land more intensively used? In other words, what if there was another evolution in urban thinking and the current first-tier suburbs could become like early species in natural plant succession--an interim, phase-in succession leading to denser and more sustainable patterns in the future?
Beyond the house, suburban roads also have the potential to be transformed into multi- purpose urban streets, the arterials converted into boulevards shared with transit and cycle lanes. In fact, the groundwork is already laid for all this, and pioneering examples exist in many cities. The major impediment is an extraordinary tangle of intractable rules. Jacobs predicted that with an economic and demographic force majeure, these obstacles would be swept away to allow ingenuity and necessity to operate.
There would need to be real pressure to make this revolution both feasible and necessary. It would need to be deeply rooted in the raw power of a demographic force or an economic imperative like the rising cost of energy. Like the natural processes of urban "unslumming," diversification, and "import replacement" that she previously examined, she was laying the groundwork so that when the time comes, the ideas are in place. This is a classic Jane Jacobs kind of argument. Could it be wrong? Might something else happen? By knowing that it might happen--and to some limited extent it is happening already--we are better prepared to effect changes with more grace and less harm.
Jane, it is so hard to say goodbye. The unique gifts you brought us are of incalculable value--your insatiable curiosity and generosity of spirit, the twinkle in your eye, your unrelenting gaze and challenge when things didn't make sense, and the way of asking far more questions than providing answers. We were indeed privileged to have you with us. Now we must carry on by ourselves.
Ken Greenberg is an architect and urban designer based in Toronto. He has worked on downtowns, waterfronts and neighbourhoods around the world.
AoD
G
ganjavih
Guest
My little Frommers walking tour book had a little section on Jane Jacob's role in saving Greenwich Village. As I strolled through the neighbourhood and other places that she helped save (ie. Washington Square), I felt both shock that these areas were ever threatened and relief that they've made it through the dark ages. Jacobs' role in promoting urbanity both in Toronto and elsewhere cannot be overestimated. And to those who believe that Toronto's old two- or three-storey neighbourhoods are no longer rational, just look at Manhattan's villages.
Bleeker St.
Bleeker St.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Globe:
Should the city buy Jane Jacobs's house?
The asking price is $850,000 for the home of the legendary urban writer and thinker
JEFF GRAY
With an asking price of $850,000, the ivy-covered Annex house at 69 Albany Ave. looks like it could be a bargain in one of Toronto's most desirable neighbourhoods.
But this Edwardian semi-detached home, last renovated in the 1970s, has an added selling point: Upstairs, in a modest study with a water-damaged wall, is the beat-up desk chair and the manual Smith Corona typewriter used by the late urban thinker Jane Jacobs.
The family of the world-famous writer, who changed the way urban planners look at cities and died in April at the age of 89, has put up for sale the house her husband designed and she lived in for 35 years.
And at the behest of real-estate agent Gilbert Goldstein, they have left her study more or less as she left it, with what appear to be rough manuscripts on her desk and pictures of her children tacked to the walls, although the furniture and other effects are not for sale. A shelf houses various editions of her published books, including a weathered early printing of her influential 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Word of the house going on the market had some at city hall musing that the city should use it to commemorate the legacy of Ms. Jacobs, perhaps by putting a historic plaque in front of the house or even buying the property so that it could be put to some other use -- as a museum, an office for a foundation inspired by her ideas, or a centre of learning, for example.
Mayor David Miller, for whom Ms. Jacobs was a trusted adviser, said any move to commemorate her had to be made with her family's approval, although he said he thought that a plaque at least should mark the building.
"It needs to be acknowledged in some way. In Jane's philosophy, the reuse of buildings is really important. So she would want to see it be used and be part of the neighbourhood," said the mayor.
Asked if the city should buy the house, Mr. Miller said: "I'm not sure it would be appropriate. . . . She believed we all had the power to change the city, and didn't want to be held up like an icon."
The local councillor, Martin Silva (Trinity-Spadina), when told of the listing, agreed the house should be designated in some way. But he said any attempt to buy it for future public use would likely have to be pursued by private fundraising, perhaps with the setting up of a foundation.
Councillor Adam Giambrone (Davenport), who has a large quotation from Ms. Jacobs's first book on the wall of his office at city hall, said he would look into the city's options, but thought trying to raise money privately in time would be impossible.
While cautioning that nothing should be done without the family's approval, he said if the city does decide that it is feasible to use the house in some way, it will have to vote to buy at its next council meeting in two weeks, if the house is still for sale.
But, said Mr. Giambrone, a former Royal Ontario Museum archeologist, the city will first have to consider whether buying Ms. Jacobs's house is the best way to memorialize her.
"Jane Jacobs talks a lot about the public realm . . . It would seem something in the public realm would make sense," he said, suggesting that a new park or a monument might be more suitable, although he agreed that the Albany Avenue house should at least be marked with a historic plaque.
He said the house could make an appropriate home for any number of "civic-minded institutions" as a way to honour her legacy.
One of Ms. Jacobs's sons, Ned Jacobs, said in a phone interview from his Vancouver home that the family never even considered that the city or some other institution might want to turn the house into a museum. He said he and Ms. Jacobs's two other children decided to put the house on the market because they had no need for it.
He said the family would be cautious about any plans to use the house to commemorate Ms. Jacobs, since she "was never into being a celebrity" and reluctant to have things named after her.
Mr. Goldstein said he wasn't sure if Ms. Jacobs's legacy would drive up the price, though he said a few of the possible buyers he has heard from have mentioned the writer's legacy.
But one woman viewing the home yesterday said she was attracted by the architecture and the prime location. "We weren't attracted by the star power," she said.
_________________________________________________
I don't think the city should acquire per se, but perhaps some non-profit group should?
AoD
Should the city buy Jane Jacobs's house?
The asking price is $850,000 for the home of the legendary urban writer and thinker
JEFF GRAY
With an asking price of $850,000, the ivy-covered Annex house at 69 Albany Ave. looks like it could be a bargain in one of Toronto's most desirable neighbourhoods.
But this Edwardian semi-detached home, last renovated in the 1970s, has an added selling point: Upstairs, in a modest study with a water-damaged wall, is the beat-up desk chair and the manual Smith Corona typewriter used by the late urban thinker Jane Jacobs.
The family of the world-famous writer, who changed the way urban planners look at cities and died in April at the age of 89, has put up for sale the house her husband designed and she lived in for 35 years.
And at the behest of real-estate agent Gilbert Goldstein, they have left her study more or less as she left it, with what appear to be rough manuscripts on her desk and pictures of her children tacked to the walls, although the furniture and other effects are not for sale. A shelf houses various editions of her published books, including a weathered early printing of her influential 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Word of the house going on the market had some at city hall musing that the city should use it to commemorate the legacy of Ms. Jacobs, perhaps by putting a historic plaque in front of the house or even buying the property so that it could be put to some other use -- as a museum, an office for a foundation inspired by her ideas, or a centre of learning, for example.
Mayor David Miller, for whom Ms. Jacobs was a trusted adviser, said any move to commemorate her had to be made with her family's approval, although he said he thought that a plaque at least should mark the building.
"It needs to be acknowledged in some way. In Jane's philosophy, the reuse of buildings is really important. So she would want to see it be used and be part of the neighbourhood," said the mayor.
Asked if the city should buy the house, Mr. Miller said: "I'm not sure it would be appropriate. . . . She believed we all had the power to change the city, and didn't want to be held up like an icon."
The local councillor, Martin Silva (Trinity-Spadina), when told of the listing, agreed the house should be designated in some way. But he said any attempt to buy it for future public use would likely have to be pursued by private fundraising, perhaps with the setting up of a foundation.
Councillor Adam Giambrone (Davenport), who has a large quotation from Ms. Jacobs's first book on the wall of his office at city hall, said he would look into the city's options, but thought trying to raise money privately in time would be impossible.
While cautioning that nothing should be done without the family's approval, he said if the city does decide that it is feasible to use the house in some way, it will have to vote to buy at its next council meeting in two weeks, if the house is still for sale.
But, said Mr. Giambrone, a former Royal Ontario Museum archeologist, the city will first have to consider whether buying Ms. Jacobs's house is the best way to memorialize her.
"Jane Jacobs talks a lot about the public realm . . . It would seem something in the public realm would make sense," he said, suggesting that a new park or a monument might be more suitable, although he agreed that the Albany Avenue house should at least be marked with a historic plaque.
He said the house could make an appropriate home for any number of "civic-minded institutions" as a way to honour her legacy.
One of Ms. Jacobs's sons, Ned Jacobs, said in a phone interview from his Vancouver home that the family never even considered that the city or some other institution might want to turn the house into a museum. He said he and Ms. Jacobs's two other children decided to put the house on the market because they had no need for it.
He said the family would be cautious about any plans to use the house to commemorate Ms. Jacobs, since she "was never into being a celebrity" and reluctant to have things named after her.
Mr. Goldstein said he wasn't sure if Ms. Jacobs's legacy would drive up the price, though he said a few of the possible buyers he has heard from have mentioned the writer's legacy.
But one woman viewing the home yesterday said she was attracted by the architecture and the prime location. "We weren't attracted by the star power," she said.
_________________________________________________
I don't think the city should acquire per se, but perhaps some non-profit group should?
AoD
A
allabootmatt
Guest
...I think that, in addition to preserving her house, instead of some half-baked "Humanitas" idea the city's next big cultural project should be a Jane Jacobs Museum of Urbanism...
On the other hand, maybe the best memorial to Jane is the city itself.
On the other hand, maybe the best memorial to Jane is the city itself.
A
adma
Guest
I also made this comment on Spacing Wire, but I wouldn't be surprised if some similar approach is being made re Syd Barrett's house in Cambridge.
Syd. Jane. Hmmm...
Syd. Jane. Hmmm...
C
Canuck 36
Guest
I walked by her house today. Saw the 'For Sale' sign, and what looked like an agent talking to a couple of perspective buyers.
O
Observer Walt
Guest
I'm not sure what the point of buying it would be. It surely would not be physically suitable as a museum.
A plaque should be put on it to mark the location.
A plaque should be put on it to mark the location.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Globe:
Where's our Jane Jacobs Blvd.?
New York's naming a park -- and maybe even a city block -- after the late urban activist. What's taking Toronto so long?
PAUL FRENCH
Special to The Globe and Mail
In life, she stopped urban planners determined to run highways through downtown North American cities. Now that she's gone, remembering Jane Jacobs -- who died this past April at 89 -- and the lasting impact she had is not high on the priority list of the city she called home for nearly 40 years.
"We don't have a specific plan as yet," Mayor David Miller says when asked about how the legendary urban thinker and writer would be commemorated.
One possibility that's no longer an option is buying her house on Albany Avenue, which was put up for sale this month. The $850,000 property sold last week to a private buyer, says real estate agent Gilbert Goldstein, who is "very respectful of Jane Jacobs and her memory," but has no plans to turn the home into a memorial site.
Other cities haven't been so slow off the mark, however. Ms. Jacobs lived in Greenwich Village until 1968 when she moved to Toronto, and last week New York City moved to rename a park after her. All but a city council vote is needed to also rename a block on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village Jane Jacobs Way. This in addition to a mayoral proclamation that declared June 28 Jane Jacobs Day in New York City.
So why was another city so much quicker to step up and create a permanent memorial?
"It's always been clear to us that she was someone we would want to honour in this way," explains Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, a group Ms. Jacobs helped establish.
"We would have done this years ago, but you're not supposed to do it until people are deceased," he says.
These kinds of tributes, according those who were close to her in Toronto, would not have pleased Ms. Jacobs.
"She was iconoclastic and not interested in being memorialized, other than having people read her work and debate her ideas," her long-time friend Alan Broadbent remembers.
Ms. Jacobs was instrumental in blocking a plan to run a highway across lower Manhattan in the 1960s and she fought to keep the character of Greenwich Village intact against the forces of development. When she moved to Toronto, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities was front and centre in blocking the Spadina expressway.
Toronto is now in the delicate situation of trying to come up with a way to remember someone who didn't want the recognition. "I don't think it will happen," former mayor John Sewell says.
One Annex resident has reportedly proposed that the city create a community centre named after Ms. Jacobs at the site of a house on Spadina Road just above the north entrance to the Spadina subway station.
"This has potential and may be a good fit, because Jane was involved in the Spadina subway and the area needs a facility of this kind," says Helen Kennedy, a candidate for city council in the fall election.
Whatever Toronto comes up with, Mr. Berman believes his efforts in New York are justified. "Without doubt she was an incredibly modest woman who would demur from any honouring of her legacy," he says. "But I think it's the responsibility of those of us who benefited from her wisdom to not be so modest in bestowing the kind of honour that she deserves."
AoD
Where's our Jane Jacobs Blvd.?
New York's naming a park -- and maybe even a city block -- after the late urban activist. What's taking Toronto so long?
PAUL FRENCH
Special to The Globe and Mail
In life, she stopped urban planners determined to run highways through downtown North American cities. Now that she's gone, remembering Jane Jacobs -- who died this past April at 89 -- and the lasting impact she had is not high on the priority list of the city she called home for nearly 40 years.
"We don't have a specific plan as yet," Mayor David Miller says when asked about how the legendary urban thinker and writer would be commemorated.
One possibility that's no longer an option is buying her house on Albany Avenue, which was put up for sale this month. The $850,000 property sold last week to a private buyer, says real estate agent Gilbert Goldstein, who is "very respectful of Jane Jacobs and her memory," but has no plans to turn the home into a memorial site.
Other cities haven't been so slow off the mark, however. Ms. Jacobs lived in Greenwich Village until 1968 when she moved to Toronto, and last week New York City moved to rename a park after her. All but a city council vote is needed to also rename a block on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village Jane Jacobs Way. This in addition to a mayoral proclamation that declared June 28 Jane Jacobs Day in New York City.
So why was another city so much quicker to step up and create a permanent memorial?
"It's always been clear to us that she was someone we would want to honour in this way," explains Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, a group Ms. Jacobs helped establish.
"We would have done this years ago, but you're not supposed to do it until people are deceased," he says.
These kinds of tributes, according those who were close to her in Toronto, would not have pleased Ms. Jacobs.
"She was iconoclastic and not interested in being memorialized, other than having people read her work and debate her ideas," her long-time friend Alan Broadbent remembers.
Ms. Jacobs was instrumental in blocking a plan to run a highway across lower Manhattan in the 1960s and she fought to keep the character of Greenwich Village intact against the forces of development. When she moved to Toronto, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities was front and centre in blocking the Spadina expressway.
Toronto is now in the delicate situation of trying to come up with a way to remember someone who didn't want the recognition. "I don't think it will happen," former mayor John Sewell says.
One Annex resident has reportedly proposed that the city create a community centre named after Ms. Jacobs at the site of a house on Spadina Road just above the north entrance to the Spadina subway station.
"This has potential and may be a good fit, because Jane was involved in the Spadina subway and the area needs a facility of this kind," says Helen Kennedy, a candidate for city council in the fall election.
Whatever Toronto comes up with, Mr. Berman believes his efforts in New York are justified. "Without doubt she was an incredibly modest woman who would demur from any honouring of her legacy," he says. "But I think it's the responsibility of those of us who benefited from her wisdom to not be so modest in bestowing the kind of honour that she deserves."
AoD
B
building babel
Guest
Rename Finch. Call it Jacobs.
The Jane Jacobs Corridor.
The Jane Jacobs Corridor.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Post:
New owners renovate with Jacobs in mind
Office to be bedroom
Jordana Huber, National Post
Published: Saturday, October 21, 2006
What would Jane think? It's the nagging question architect Terry Montgomery faces as he adds bathrooms and removes walls in the house at 69 Albany Ave.
Mr. Montgomery and his wife bought Jane Jacobs' semi-detached, Edwardian home, and along with four bedrooms and a spacious backyard, he bought the iconic workspace of an influential author and activist whose ideas helped redefine urban planning.
Renovations on the three-storey Annex home where Ms. Jacobs lived for more than 30 years have already begun. A bright yellow garbage chute exits through the window in the second-floor office where Ms. Jacobs wrote some of her seven books. The room is set to be transformed into a master bedroom.
''Every time we make a decision we wonder what Jane would've thought,'' said Mr. Montgomery, who bought the home for its $850,000 asking price in July -- three months after the activist's death. ''We can kind of feel her presence. For example, we're certainly not going to have air conditioning in this house because these big old Annex houses don't need it. That would've been my natural inclination anyways, but that's partly thinking about Jane as well.''
Mr. Montgomery doesn't plan to make any changes to the outside of the house except to restore the two porches, upon which, until her passing in April at the age of 89, Ms. Jacobs was frequently found on and often photographed.
''The porches are the best part of the house,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''They're iconic. When you think of Jane, you think of her on the porch.''
New windows, wiring, insulation as well as two more bathrooms are being added. Gone is the glass-door telephone booth that sat near the open-concept kitchen. So too is the ivy that curved its way up the facade of the house.
Mr. Montgomery drew up the plans for the renovation with the aid of the sketches architect Robert Jacobs, Jane's husband, made for the home they renovated in the early 1970s.
''I hope we can retain the open, fresh, rambly feeling it had when Jane was there,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''When they renovated it they made it big, open and generous. There was nothing sentimental about it, and that's how we want to keep it.''
Mr. Montgomery said he did not buy the Annex house because it was owned by Ms. Jacobs, though he is moving from the Beaches, his home of 28 years, in part because she helped make downtown more livable.
''I studied her in school, used to hear her talk, and was always inspired by her,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''She was the one who made us realize that city streets are wonderful places and that projects that eliminate urban life aren't. That doesn't sound like a fresh idea now, but it sure did 30 years ago.''
Mr. Montgomery said neighbours have been supportive of the renovation, though curious passersby pepper contractors with questions.
''It's amazing to own a house that a person of such stature lived in,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''It's always there as a thought. But on the other hand, we are moving on. We will, of course, live in it differently than she did, but her stature is always there.''
© National Post 2006
AoD
New owners renovate with Jacobs in mind
Office to be bedroom
Jordana Huber, National Post
Published: Saturday, October 21, 2006
What would Jane think? It's the nagging question architect Terry Montgomery faces as he adds bathrooms and removes walls in the house at 69 Albany Ave.
Mr. Montgomery and his wife bought Jane Jacobs' semi-detached, Edwardian home, and along with four bedrooms and a spacious backyard, he bought the iconic workspace of an influential author and activist whose ideas helped redefine urban planning.
Renovations on the three-storey Annex home where Ms. Jacobs lived for more than 30 years have already begun. A bright yellow garbage chute exits through the window in the second-floor office where Ms. Jacobs wrote some of her seven books. The room is set to be transformed into a master bedroom.
''Every time we make a decision we wonder what Jane would've thought,'' said Mr. Montgomery, who bought the home for its $850,000 asking price in July -- three months after the activist's death. ''We can kind of feel her presence. For example, we're certainly not going to have air conditioning in this house because these big old Annex houses don't need it. That would've been my natural inclination anyways, but that's partly thinking about Jane as well.''
Mr. Montgomery doesn't plan to make any changes to the outside of the house except to restore the two porches, upon which, until her passing in April at the age of 89, Ms. Jacobs was frequently found on and often photographed.
''The porches are the best part of the house,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''They're iconic. When you think of Jane, you think of her on the porch.''
New windows, wiring, insulation as well as two more bathrooms are being added. Gone is the glass-door telephone booth that sat near the open-concept kitchen. So too is the ivy that curved its way up the facade of the house.
Mr. Montgomery drew up the plans for the renovation with the aid of the sketches architect Robert Jacobs, Jane's husband, made for the home they renovated in the early 1970s.
''I hope we can retain the open, fresh, rambly feeling it had when Jane was there,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''When they renovated it they made it big, open and generous. There was nothing sentimental about it, and that's how we want to keep it.''
Mr. Montgomery said he did not buy the Annex house because it was owned by Ms. Jacobs, though he is moving from the Beaches, his home of 28 years, in part because she helped make downtown more livable.
''I studied her in school, used to hear her talk, and was always inspired by her,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''She was the one who made us realize that city streets are wonderful places and that projects that eliminate urban life aren't. That doesn't sound like a fresh idea now, but it sure did 30 years ago.''
Mr. Montgomery said neighbours have been supportive of the renovation, though curious passersby pepper contractors with questions.
''It's amazing to own a house that a person of such stature lived in,'' Mr. Montgomery said. ''It's always there as a thought. But on the other hand, we are moving on. We will, of course, live in it differently than she did, but her stature is always there.''
© National Post 2006
AoD
Pols, protest, stuck string; Jacobs would have loved it
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_324/polsprotest.html
At the “Jane Jacobs Way†dedication, from left, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, Landmarks Commission Chairperson Robert Tierney (hidden behind Nadler), C.B. 2 Chairperson Jo Hamilton, Borough President Scott Stringer, Councilmember Alan Gerson, activist Doris Diether, state Senator Tom Duane, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and former C.B. 2 Chairperson Brad Hoylman.
By Albert Amateau
Jane Jacobs, gone from Greenwich Village these 40 years and gone from this life three years ago, was celebrated anew on Monday morning when a crowd of West Village neighbors and public officials gathered in front of the White Horse Tavern to unveil a commemorative street sign, “Jane Jacobs Way.â€
A few people from Brooklyn added to the throng to protest the proposed Coney Island renewal plan; a former East Village woman came to denounce Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Jane Jacobs, the foe of urban renewal and champion of neighborhoods and street life, would have loved it. She lived on the block at 555 Hudson St. with her family when she led the fight against Robert Moses’ 1962 proposal for a Lower Manhattan Expressway through the Village.
Doris Diether, the longest serving community board member (since 1964) in the city and a close ally of Jacobs in the battles to preserve Greenwich Village, was the guest of honor. Indeed, City Councilmember Alan Gerson referred to Diether as “Doris Jacobs†at one point. Quinn presented her with a replica of the “Jane Jacobs Way†street sign, and Diether was so moved that she was barely able to hold back the tears at the conclusion of her remarks.
The unveiling of the street sign on the southwest corner of Hudson and W. 11th Sts. didn’t go all that smoothly, either. The string separated from the sleeve covering the sign before it was completely unveiled, and for a while only “Jane†was visible. Tobi Bergman, a Community Board 2 member, borrowed a stepladder from the White Horse and completed the unveiling.
Jo Hamilton, newly elected chairperson of Community Board 2, was master of ceremonies, and recalled how Jacobs transformed thinking about urban life with her first book, “The Death and Life of Great Ameri-can Cities.†But she said the Village mostly claimed Jacobs as a friend who cared about her neighborhood.
Congressmember Jerrold Nadler paid tribute to Jacobs’s vision of a city that lives because of its diversity.
Protesters wearing Jane Jacobs-style glasses, wigs and clothes decried the Coney Island redevelopment plan, which they charge will shrink the existing entertainment area. Said Angie Pontani, a.k.a. Miss Cyclone, right, “It’s such a special place — you have to preserve it. The biggest threat is high-rise towers on Surf Ave.â€
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that in the current irresponsible rush to development, “we must think of Jane Jacobs and figure out how to build for the future and preserve our wonderful neighborhoods.â€
State Senator Tom Duane recalled reading Jane Jacobs’s books as a college student and being struck by the need to preserve neighborhoods and at the same time keep them dynamic.
Assemblymember Deborah Glick said Jacobs “came from a generation that refused to roll over — refused to accede to overdevelopment.â€
Robert Tierney, head of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said, “Preservation doesn’t come easy — it requires work and courage.†Tierney added that he was thrilled to be honoring Jane Jacobs in her own neighborhood where she was receiving the recognition she deserves.
Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said later that he was not at the street-renaming ceremony because the organizers had not informed him in time, even though the society had proposed the renaming in 2006 shortly after Jacobs’s death.
“We’re glad that Jane Jacobs has finally received this long-overdue recognition of her immeasurable contribution to our neighborhood. An early member of the board of advisors of G.V.S.H.P., she continues to inspire our work every day,†Berman said later.
Before her death, Jacobs contributed an oral history to G.V.S.H.P., which is available on the society’s Web site, www.gvshp.org .
Jacobs, who came to New York in 1934 as Jane Butzner just out of high school from Scranton, Pa., to live with her sister in Brooklyn, soon discovered Greenwich Village, where low-rise buildings allowed people to see the sky and where pedestrians were not dominated by cars. She soon began writing articles for magazines, and in 1944 married the architect Robert Hyde Jacobs.
She left for Canada with her family in 1968 and went to Toronto to avoid having her sons drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Jacobs was as much of an activist against destructive development in Toronto as she was in New York.
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_324/polsprotest.html
At the “Jane Jacobs Way†dedication, from left, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, Landmarks Commission Chairperson Robert Tierney (hidden behind Nadler), C.B. 2 Chairperson Jo Hamilton, Borough President Scott Stringer, Councilmember Alan Gerson, activist Doris Diether, state Senator Tom Duane, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and former C.B. 2 Chairperson Brad Hoylman.
By Albert Amateau
Jane Jacobs, gone from Greenwich Village these 40 years and gone from this life three years ago, was celebrated anew on Monday morning when a crowd of West Village neighbors and public officials gathered in front of the White Horse Tavern to unveil a commemorative street sign, “Jane Jacobs Way.â€
A few people from Brooklyn added to the throng to protest the proposed Coney Island renewal plan; a former East Village woman came to denounce Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Jane Jacobs, the foe of urban renewal and champion of neighborhoods and street life, would have loved it. She lived on the block at 555 Hudson St. with her family when she led the fight against Robert Moses’ 1962 proposal for a Lower Manhattan Expressway through the Village.
Doris Diether, the longest serving community board member (since 1964) in the city and a close ally of Jacobs in the battles to preserve Greenwich Village, was the guest of honor. Indeed, City Councilmember Alan Gerson referred to Diether as “Doris Jacobs†at one point. Quinn presented her with a replica of the “Jane Jacobs Way†street sign, and Diether was so moved that she was barely able to hold back the tears at the conclusion of her remarks.
The unveiling of the street sign on the southwest corner of Hudson and W. 11th Sts. didn’t go all that smoothly, either. The string separated from the sleeve covering the sign before it was completely unveiled, and for a while only “Jane†was visible. Tobi Bergman, a Community Board 2 member, borrowed a stepladder from the White Horse and completed the unveiling.
Jo Hamilton, newly elected chairperson of Community Board 2, was master of ceremonies, and recalled how Jacobs transformed thinking about urban life with her first book, “The Death and Life of Great Ameri-can Cities.†But she said the Village mostly claimed Jacobs as a friend who cared about her neighborhood.
Congressmember Jerrold Nadler paid tribute to Jacobs’s vision of a city that lives because of its diversity.
Protesters wearing Jane Jacobs-style glasses, wigs and clothes decried the Coney Island redevelopment plan, which they charge will shrink the existing entertainment area. Said Angie Pontani, a.k.a. Miss Cyclone, right, “It’s such a special place — you have to preserve it. The biggest threat is high-rise towers on Surf Ave.â€
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that in the current irresponsible rush to development, “we must think of Jane Jacobs and figure out how to build for the future and preserve our wonderful neighborhoods.â€
State Senator Tom Duane recalled reading Jane Jacobs’s books as a college student and being struck by the need to preserve neighborhoods and at the same time keep them dynamic.
Assemblymember Deborah Glick said Jacobs “came from a generation that refused to roll over — refused to accede to overdevelopment.â€
Robert Tierney, head of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said, “Preservation doesn’t come easy — it requires work and courage.†Tierney added that he was thrilled to be honoring Jane Jacobs in her own neighborhood where she was receiving the recognition she deserves.
Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said later that he was not at the street-renaming ceremony because the organizers had not informed him in time, even though the society had proposed the renaming in 2006 shortly after Jacobs’s death.
“We’re glad that Jane Jacobs has finally received this long-overdue recognition of her immeasurable contribution to our neighborhood. An early member of the board of advisors of G.V.S.H.P., she continues to inspire our work every day,†Berman said later.
Before her death, Jacobs contributed an oral history to G.V.S.H.P., which is available on the society’s Web site, www.gvshp.org .
Jacobs, who came to New York in 1934 as Jane Butzner just out of high school from Scranton, Pa., to live with her sister in Brooklyn, soon discovered Greenwich Village, where low-rise buildings allowed people to see the sky and where pedestrians were not dominated by cars. She soon began writing articles for magazines, and in 1944 married the architect Robert Hyde Jacobs.
She left for Canada with her family in 1968 and went to Toronto to avoid having her sons drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Jacobs was as much of an activist against destructive development in Toronto as she was in New York.