Jane Jacobs (née Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that "urban renewal" and "slum clearance" did not respect the needs of city-dwellers.Jacobs organized grassroots efforts to protect neighborhoods from urban renewal and slum clearance – in particular plans by Robert Moses to overhaul her own Greenwich Village neighborhood. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through the area of Manhattan that would later become known as SoHo, as well as part of Little Italy and Chinatown. She was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on that project. After moving to Toronto in 1968, she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toronto that were planned and u
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“Think of a city and what comes to mind?” asks Jane Jacobs (1961: 29). “Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.” In our opinion, Jacobs should have answered: its commercial streets. Indeed, on Jacobs’ ideal street, small shops attract a diversity of people who use the public space and interact
Springer2018
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This course proposes to investigate six strategies for architecture in the age of acceleration: Regionalism, Territoriality, Participation, Transformation, Commonality and Rationality. Anchoring these strategies in recent architectural history, it will explore their relevance for today's practice.