Keywords Architects Born in 1916 Economists Urban Planning

In 1940 Jacobs became an editorial assistant and then a writer for the trade magazine Iron Age (now New Steel). In 1942 she became a pamphlet writer for the Office of War Information, and subsequently a pamphlet and magazine writer for the US State Department of Information. In 1952, when that office relocated to Washington from New York, she became an associate editor for Architectural Forum magazine.

As a citizen activist in the 1960s, Jacobs received credit for helping to save West Greenwich Village and Soho from demolition for urban renewal and highway construction. A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled her to write her acclaimed book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which was published in 1961 after a two-year leave of absence from Architectural Forum.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, Jacobs left the United States with her husband and children and settled in Toronto, where she immediately became involved in a fight to stop expressway expansion. Through community activism she continued to make a mark on her chosen home, promoting healthy neighbourhoods and lobbying for conditions that encourage eclectic economic enterprise. In the fall of 1997, during a month-long Toronto-based celebration of her work and thought sponsored by urbanist and philanthropist Alan Broadbent, Jacobs surprised her listeners by proposing the possibility that Toronto separate from Ontario, a proposal consistent with her view that the cultural and economic vitality of cities should be matched by increased political power. In the spring of 2001 she helped initiate and was a key participant in a meeting of the mayors of five Canadian cities convened to discuss ways of altering the balance of power in favour of local governments.

Since 1961, when The Death and Life of Great American Cities was an instant hit with the general public despite neglect by the planning establishment, until her death Jacobs continued to probe into the workings of societies in several books about how cities and their economies work. Her ability to observe and then codify behaviour and occurrences had the effect of making complex ideas readily accessible. Her occupation and preoccupation with the local, with things that work smartly and directly, is combined with an appreciation for the delicate complexity of all systems and a search for patterns of relationships within them. Non-linear thinking and the application of the ecological paradigm to human endeavour as well as to natural phenomena characterize her approach.

Although dismissed by some for her matter-of-fact logic and her rejection of grand academic theories, Jacobs has attracted a diverse following of urban thinkers and civic practitioners. She is known outside North America primarily as an economist, pattern observer and analyst of complex systems. Her books are frequently included on reading lists for post-secondary courses in disciplines including architecture, complexity science, ecology, economics and urban planning.

A reluctant celebrity who prefers her typewriter to the limelight, Jacobs spurned numerous offers of honorary degrees from universities around the world because she rejected honorifics and was suspicious of "credentialism." In June 1998 she was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2000 she was awarded the Order of Ontario. Also in 2000 she received the Vincent Scully Prize in Architecture awarded by the National Building Museum, Washington.

Robert Jacobs died in 1996. Together they had three children, James, Edward and Burgin.

Jacobs, Jane
Jane Jacobs, 2001 (photo by J. Joseph Weadick).

Author MARY W. ROWE

Suggested Reading
Max Allen, ed., Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs (1997); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961); The Economy of Cities (1969); The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty (Massey Lecture, 1970); Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984); Systems of Survival (1992); A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece (1995); The Nature of Economies (2000); Toronto: Considering Self-government (2000).

Links to Other Sites
Jane Jacobs
This site features a biography of Jane Jacobs, the acclaimed urban writer and activist who has championed community-based approaches to planning. From the Project for Public Spaces website.