Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006

Reuters reports the death of Jane Jacobs, author of 1961's influential urban-planning critique The Death of Life of Great American Cities.

Appreciations come in from Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times and Witold Rybczynski in Slate.


"The answer to such superficiality is not to resurrect the spirit of Robert Moses. But in retrospect his vision, however flawed, represented an America that still believed a healthy government would provide the infrastructure—roads, parks, bridges—that binds us into a nation. Ms. Jacobs, at her best, was fighting to preserve the more delicate bonds that tie us to a community. A city, to survive and flourish, needs both perspectives."

Nicolai Ouroussoff offers a counterpoint in The New York Times.