Maggie says:
Jane Jacobs, the grandmother of community-based, lively, walkable, livable urban planning, has died. She was 89.
Read her excellent New York Times obit here.
Jacobs' landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is the bible of how to think about cities and neighborhoods the right way, the human way, and the smart way.
Her voice is important; her presence cannot be overstated.
Thanks, Jane.
- "The point of cities is multiplicity of choice."
- "There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served."
- "Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."
- "To approach a city as if it were [an]... architectural problem... is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life... The results... are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy."
- "Cities are problems in organized complexity."
- "It may be romantic to search for the salves of society's ills in slow-moving rustic surroundings, or among innocent, unspoiled provincials, if such exist, but it is a waste of time."
- "Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life must grow."
Technorati tag: Jane Jacobs
|