Creating Community
Jane Jacobs had no professional training in the field of city planning, she was an ordinary person using her own observations of city life to formulate her philosophy about them.
Jane Jacobs life was a true David and Goliath Success story of how an ordinary person can stand up to the seemingly insurmountable steamrolling inertia of corporate America and WIN. Win, not just for herself and her family but for the greater good of her community and the whole city.
"Born in 1916 in the coal mining town of Scranton, PA, Jacobs has never been afraid to stand on her own. After graduating high school, where she claims she "didn't listen much in class. I would try to, but I would just get bored with it....I just did enough to get by, really" (Feeney, 10), she took an unpaid position as the assistant to the women's page editor at the local newspaper. Shortly after that, and in the middle of the Depression, she left Scranton for New York City.
During her first several years in the city, she held many different types of jobs, and was even subject to periods of unemployment. This experience with hard times, she claims, "...gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like" (Feeney, 33). Her first real writing position was at a metals trade paper. While working there, she also held free-lance writing positions at The New York Herald Tribune and Vogue. She worked for the Office of War Information, and it was there that she met her husband, architect Robert Jacobs. She continued her writing later when she joined the staff of Architectural Forum. "
After residing in New York City for thirty years, Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto in 1968, where she recently passed away at the age of 89.
She wrote a variety of books over the years, including The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her first published work, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and Systems of Survival, her most recent effort. It is through these writings that she expressed her ideas about cities.
Advocating "mixed-use" in the urban fabric, meaning no separation of the different types of buildings, whether residence or business oriented, old or new. She saw cities as being "organic, spontaneous, and untidy," and that diversity and activity are crucial to their survival over the centuries.
Jacobs believed that the concentration of people in a city is essential for its economic growth and prosperity. Her original ideas gave us the opportunity to cities in a completely different light.
Jane Jacobs life was a true David and Goliath Success story of how an ordinary person can stand up to the seemingly insurmountable steamrolling inertia of corporate America and WIN. Win, not just for herself and her family but for the greater good of her community and the whole city.
"Born in 1916 in the coal mining town of Scranton, PA, Jacobs has never been afraid to stand on her own. After graduating high school, where she claims she "didn't listen much in class. I would try to, but I would just get bored with it....I just did enough to get by, really" (Feeney, 10), she took an unpaid position as the assistant to the women's page editor at the local newspaper. Shortly after that, and in the middle of the Depression, she left Scranton for New York City.
During her first several years in the city, she held many different types of jobs, and was even subject to periods of unemployment. This experience with hard times, she claims, "...gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like" (Feeney, 33). Her first real writing position was at a metals trade paper. While working there, she also held free-lance writing positions at The New York Herald Tribune and Vogue. She worked for the Office of War Information, and it was there that she met her husband, architect Robert Jacobs. She continued her writing later when she joined the staff of Architectural Forum. "
After residing in New York City for thirty years, Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto in 1968, where she recently passed away at the age of 89.
She wrote a variety of books over the years, including The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her first published work, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and Systems of Survival, her most recent effort. It is through these writings that she expressed her ideas about cities.
Advocating "mixed-use" in the urban fabric, meaning no separation of the different types of buildings, whether residence or business oriented, old or new. She saw cities as being "organic, spontaneous, and untidy," and that diversity and activity are crucial to their survival over the centuries.
Jacobs believed that the concentration of people in a city is essential for its economic growth and prosperity. Her original ideas gave us the opportunity to cities in a completely different light.
posted by Chris Red at 8:46 PM
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