Biography


Jane Jacobs, holding documentary evidence at a press conference. 1961. Source.

Jane Jacobs was born in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 1935, after completing high school, she moved to New York City to live with her sister. There, she worked various jobs, such as a secretary, a freelance writer and in a department store and later attending the Columbia University School of General Studies for two years. She continued writing and worked for the Office of War Information, where she met her future husband, Robert Jacobs. They married in 1944 and later had two sons and a daughter.
Jacobs famously lived in Greenwich Village, above an old candy shop. She’d always been interested in the cityscape - some of her articles in Vogue from when she was a freelance writer were about different neighborhoods of the city. However, she really started to observe city planning as an editor for Architectural Forum. During her 10 years there, she found many problems with the city-planning practices of that era - she thought they weren’t safe, they didn’t preserve neighborhoods, and they weren’t economically viable.


An advertisment for The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. 1961. Source.

She wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, a landmark book on city planning. She attacked city planning of the 1950s - especially the practice of “urban renewal.” At the time, many city planners criticized the book, largely dismissing Jacobs. As a woman, mother, wife, and without a college degree or traditional experience in the field, she was viewed as an amateur intruder in urban planning. Today, the book is considered a classic, and is still widely read and used today in urban planning.

She started to get involved in activism, organizing opposition and protesting against many city plans, such as building a road through Washington Square Park, fighting slum-clearance in Greenwich Village, and the construction of the Lower-Manhattan Expressway.

Fighting for Lower Manhattan

Jacobs greatly opposed all the aspects of the plan for the Lower-Manhattan Expressway. The notion of “slum clearance,” and then replacing the buildings of the neighborhood and turning them into high rises went totally against her philosophy, and she thought that would damage the community. She believed the highway would completely destroy the neighborhood, and would greatly affect her Greenwich Village.
Jacobs then became chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway. She gained support from figures such as Margaret Mead and Eleanor Roosevelt, and worked with other activists, such as Shirley Hayes. She organized the neighborhood, held protests and meetings and wrote letters to politicians and articles for newspapers. She was even arrested for disrupting a public hearing on the LOMEX.
Finally, in 1969, mayor John V. Lindsay cancelled the project.

Legacy

Opposed to the Vietnam War, Jacobs moved with her family (including her draft-age sons) to Toronto in 1968. She continued advocating, such as protesting the proposed Spadina Expressway in 1969. Jacobs passed away in Toronto in 2006.
Jane Jacobs introduced many key ideas still used today in urbanism - she viewed cities as organic ecosystems rather than mechanical structures. She advocated for mixed-use development - the usage of both residential and commercial structures in the same place, meant to promote the local economic development of cities. She also advocated for collaborating with locals for expertise, rather than relying on outside urban planning experts. Her views are still used and debated today, especially regarding modern issues such as gentrification.
Regardless, the cityscape of New York City would look very different today if it weren’t for her efforts.