Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs OC OOntwas an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist best known for her influence on urban studies. Her influential book The Death and Life of Great American Citiesargued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of most city-dwellers. The book also introduced sociological concepts such as "eyes on the street" and "social capital"...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 May 1916
CityScranton, PA
Jane Jacobs quotes about
ideas old-buildings history
Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
nature ideas champion
There are dangers in sentimentalizing nature. Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect. It is no accident that we Americans, probably the world's champion sentimentalizers about nature, are at one and the same time probably the world's most voracious and disrespectful destroyers of wild and rural countryside.
ideas old-buildings needs
New ideas often need old buildings.
cities ideas people
All through organized history, if you wanted prosperity you had to have cities. Cities are places that attract new people with new ideas.
dark past age
Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.
fashion men intellectual
Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth.
sentimentality
Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches.
presentation
The best part of a Reg Hartt presentation is what he has to say.
running jail government
Privately run jails are a mark of American "reinvented government" that has been picked up by neoconcervatives in Canada.
mean improvement feedback
Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole
past foxes culture
Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses.
women effort repetition
Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial.
nuclear foundation trouble
While politicians, clergy, creators of advertisements, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution, is currently in grave trouble.
grateful independent people
I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.