Jane Jacobs’s work is cousin to the radical visions of the 1960s, but she was ultimately working to reinvent, not simply destroy conventional wisdom. This article is an adapted version of the introduction to Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. Read more on CityLab
The priority given to place and public space in the New Urban Agenda, an international agreement on cities that will be finalized at the Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador this week, marks an important shift for the global development community. But this document is still playing catch-up to how communities and placemakers are mobilizing on this issue.
As urban historian Sandy Zipp and myself compiled Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs, and immersed ourselves in the discourse around this great urban thinker, one thing became clear: Everyone has their own Jane Jacobs.
This article explores the problems and possibilities of architecture today, and particularly how our systems of development and planning create the everyday urban fabric. How can we rejig our city building machinery to produce the city we want?
This is the introduction to a series of blog posts exploring how so many issues affecting cities around the world converge in our public spaces.