Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs, celebrated urban theorist, died Tuesday at age 89. Jacobs' most influential work, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", was published in 1961. Espousing theories about urban life and city form that were largely unfashionable at the time (and even some that continue to be today), Jacobs was an opponent of large, sweeping renewal projects and development forces that often sought to clear and rebuild. A powerful activist presence in New York in the 1960's, Jacobs ultimately relocated to Toronto, where she continued to campaign for, and write about, cities. Always endowed with a strong anti-bureaucratic, anti-establishment bent, many of Jacobs' proposals for maintaining rich, variegated, urban life, have found acceptance and even implementation.