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
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.
The Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking has challenged me to observe closely and think deeply about the connections between the innovation economy, social dynamics, and the built environment.
This article tells the story of Jane’s Walk, a festival that began as a one-city memorial to the great urban thinker Jane Jacobs, and has since evolved into a movement spanning nearly 200 cities around the world.
As a Torontonian at heart, I’m always looking for opportunities to bring the stories of Toronto’s amazing accomplishments in city building to a broader audience. So in this article I drill down on the city’s Neighborhood Planning Offices, storefront workspaces that aimed to make city planning more accountable, convenient, accessible and responsive to communities.
“The plural of anecdote is not data.” Since the 1970s, this phrase has become a truism for all the wrong reasons.
Last spring, I graduated from Brown University’s MA in Public Humanities program, and I often get asked what exactly I studied.