Jane Isabel Jacobs[1] OC OOnt (née Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics.

Routinely, she was described first as a housewife,[12] as she did not have a college degree or any formal training in urban planning; as a result, her lack of credentials was seized upon as grounds for criticism.

Although her editors expected a positive story, Jacobs criticized Bacon's project, reacting against its lack of concern for the poor African Americans who were directly affected.

Jacobs was criticized with ad hominem attacks, being called a "militant dame" and a "housewife": an amateur who had no right to interfere with an established discipline.

[51] In other political activities she became an opponent of the Vietnam War, marched on the Pentagon in October 1967,[52] and criticized the construction of the World Trade Center as a disaster for Manhattan's waterfront.

Moses' plan, funded as "slum clearance" by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, also called for several blocks to be razed and replaced with upscale high-rises.

Jacob—recruited to the cause by Gerard La Mountain, a local Catholic priest whose church was in the path of the planned LOMEX route—had joined the committee under Hayes, but she took a more prominent role under Rubinow, reaching out to media outlets such as The Village Voice, which provided more sympathetic coverage than The New York Times.

[56][57] The committee gained the support of Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lewis Mumford, Charles Abrams, and William H. Whyte, as well as Carmine De Sapio, a Greenwich Village resident and influential Democratic leader.

[58] On 25 June 1958, the city closed Washington Square Park to traffic, and the joint committee held a ribbon tying (not cutting) ceremony.

[52] She decided to leave the US in part because she opposed the Vietnam War, she worried about the fate of her two draft-age sons, and she did not want to continue fighting the New York City government.

It includes an annual stipend of $5,000 for three years to be given to "celebrate Toronto's original, unsung heroes – by seeking out citizens who are engaged in activities that contribute to the city's vitality".

She backed an ecologist, Tooker Gomberg, who lost Toronto's 2000 mayoralty race, and she was an adviser to David Miller's successful mayoral campaign in 2003, at a time when he was seen as a longshot.

[73] Although Toronto council initially rejected the school's plans, the decision later was reversed – and the project was given the go-ahead by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) when opponents failed to produce credible witnesses and tried to withdraw from the case during the hearing.

[85] The influential Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, known for his work on urban studies, acknowledged [86] that Jane Jacobs (1960s) had been prescient in attacking Moses for "replacing well-functioning neighborhoods with Le Corbusier-inspired towers".

The concept had a huge influence on planners and architects such as Oscar Newman, who prepared the idea through a series of studies that would culminate in his defensible space theory.

Her Toronto living room was represented, based on the one at her Albany Avenue house in The Annex, where she often spoke with noted thinkers and political leaders including Marshall McLuhan, Paul Martin, and the Queen of the Netherlands.

An accompanying exhibit publication included essays and articles by such architecture critics, artists, activists, and journalists as Malcolm Gladwell, Reverend Billy, Robert Neuwirth, Tom Wolfe, Thomas de Monchaux, and William McDonough.

[103] William (Bill) Teron accepted the 2013 award "for his influential career in public policy and passionate advocacy for quality design and commitment to development in the Ottawa area".

[109] Jacobs is the subject of the 2017 documentary film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, which depicts her victories over Robert Moses and her philosophy of urban design.

[85][116][117][118][119][120] In places such as the West Village, the factors that she argued would maintain economic and cultural diversity have led instead to gentrification and some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

[121] Jacobs advocated the abolition of zoning laws and restoration of free markets in land, which would result in dense, mixed-use neighborhoods and she frequently cited New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.

[122] Beyond the practical lessons in city design and planning that Death and Life offers, the theoretical underpinnings of the work challenge the modern development mindset.

Without the requirements of literacy, permanent and monumental building, or the signs of specialized civil and armed forces, 'cities' can be accurately interpreted as existing thousands of years before when Childe and Maisels place them.

The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty incorporated and expanded Jacobs's presentation of the 1979 Massey Lectures, entitled Canadian Cities and Sovereignty-Association.

The origins of the contemporary secessionist-movement in the Quiet Revolution are examined, along with Canada's historical reliance on natural resources and foreign-owned manufacturing for its own economic development.

One can start at the bottom end of the spectrum with the 'backward' region, which are economies who have lost their competitive advantages and are losing population or becoming dependent on largesse transfers from wealthier areas.

Jacobs's characters discuss the four methods by which "dynamically stable systems" may evade collapse: "bifurcations; positive-feedback loops; negative-feedback controls; and emergency adaptations" (p. 86).

Their conversations also cover the "double nature of fitness for survival" (traits to avoid destroying one's own habitat as well as success in competition to feed and breed, p. 119), and unpredictability including the butterfly effect characterized in terms of multiplicity of variables as well as disproportional response to cause, and self-organization where "a system can be making itself up as it goes along" (p. 137).

Published in 2004 by Random House, Dark Age Ahead posits Jacobs's argument that North American civilization shows signs of a spiral decline comparable to the Roman empire's collapse.

Her discussion focuses on "five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm", summarized as the nuclear family and community; quality in education; free thought in science; representational government and responsible taxes; and corporate and professional accountability.