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jane jacobs

Remembering Urban Growth, From Idea to Implementation

October 17, 2011 by Chuck Wolfe
with 238 views
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For many of today’s advocates of creative cities, success cannot be achieved soon enough. Common aspirations of sprawl avoidance, compact development, dynamic public spaces, ecosystem integration and multimodal transit are increasingly touted in both the public and private sectors. [read more]

Jane Jacobs on Neighborhoods, Placemaking & Active Living

July 22, 2011 by Kaid Benfield
with 995 views
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      Amazingly, the video below is the first time I have seen and heard the late Jane Jacobs speak.  Everyone in my world knows her work and her wisdom, of course: she was voted #1 in Planetizen's 2009 poll of urban thinkers.  Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was immensely influential... [read more]

In Jane's shoes and through Jane's eyes, #1

May 19, 2011 by Lorne Daniel
with 115 views
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Feet on the street and eyes on the community. Two fundamentals of the work of urban thinker Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) resonate with me – the idea that an urban environment is best understood at ground level, and that observant citizens can make a difference. On the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Death and Life of Great... [read more]

Death to Planning (Long Live Planning)

April 25, 2011 by Mari Pierce-Quinonez
with 170 views
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A lengthy piece in the Design Observer Group written by Thomas Campanella, a faculty member of UNC Chapel Hill, decries the "trivial" nature of the planning profession.  In "Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning," Campanella blames Jacobs for removing the god-like aura surrounding the city planner, and sending... [read more]

WWJJD: What Would Jane Jacobs Think Of Green Building In New York City Circa Now?

July 7, 2010 by Stephen Del Percio
with 1,030 views
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If you dabble in urbanism even a little bit, you know who Jane Jacobs is. I write this with conviction, because I only dabble in urbanism a little bit, and I know who Jane Jacobs is. But for most of us — or at least for me — the actual outlines of who Jane Jacobs is and what her legacy means are fairly vague. I know her as the opposite... [read more]

Two responses to the terrorism question

May 4, 2010 by Daniel Nairn
with 255 views
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Both the New York response and the Washington response to security threats just happen to be on display in the same week ... The New York response to terrorism has been "see something, say something." These were the words that the T-shirt vendor who alerted a mounted police officer of the smoking SUV told reporters as he stepped into a... [read more]

Interview with Anthony Flint, Author of “Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on America’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City”

January 12, 2010 by The Dirt ASLA
with 522 views
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Anthony Flint, author of “Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City” (Random House, 2009), is director of public affairs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass. A journalist for 20 years, primarily at The Boston Globe, he is also author... [read more]

Chicago: Lewis Mumford on Daniel Burnham

October 31, 2009 by Aaron Renn
with 171 views
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Lewis Mumford’s The City in History is one of the all time great books on cities. Published in 1961, it is contemporary with Jane Jacob’s “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Both of these are landmark works, and are also rhetorically magnificent. It makes me think back to the early 1600’s when the formative works of... [read more]

Hiking through Arlington County

October 5, 2009 by Daniel Nairn
with 258 views
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Last weekend I hiked along the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park, and this weekend I hiked the Arlington corridor, outside of Washington D.C., from Ballston to Rosslyn. These are both beautiful places in very different ways. It seems like everyone in the country is watching Ken Burn’s series on the National Parks. It... [read more]