Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs OC OOntwas an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist best known for her influence on urban studies. Her influential book The Death and Life of Great American Citiesargued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of most city-dwellers. The book also introduced sociological concepts such as "eyes on the street" and "social capital"...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 May 1916
CityScranton, PA
women effort repetition
Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial.
nuclear foundation trouble
While politicians, clergy, creators of advertisements, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution, is currently in grave trouble.
grateful independent people
I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.
too-much littles building
We expect too much of new # buildings , and too little of ourselves.
animal cities car
The second mode to deal with unsafe cities is to take refuge in vehicles. This is the technique practiced in the big wild-animal reservations of Africa, where tourists are warned to leave their cars under no circumstances until they reach a lodge. It is also the technique practiced in Los Angeles.
cities erosion attrition
Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?
thinking cities giving
It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.
military government irrelevance
Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn't necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for rise and decline of wealth. Indeed, the failure of national governments and blocs of nations to force economic life to do their bidding suggests some sort of essential irrelevance.
life art order
Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.
dream cities people
Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.
education strange given
By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.
devil outcomes details
In wretched outcomes, the devil is in the details.
awe-and-wonder water tree
To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.
intellectual way poverty
To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.