Exploring the Thought of Jane Jacobs

In conversation with the great works of journalist, author, theorist, and activist, Jane Jacobs, this study delves into her thoughts on cities, nations, and economies for today's urban challenges.

With the publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) changed the way urban planners, architects, politicians, and ordinary citizens understood the city and its challenges. While less attention has been paid to her six subsequent works on cities and economies, Exploring the Thought of Jane Jacobs seeks to remedy that neglect. With careful attention to context, Richard Keeley explores Jacobs's understanding of streets and neighborhoods in cities great and small, her vision of the city as an organism extended through generations, the dynamics of economic development, the ethics of the workplace and difficulties of ethical business practice, and the need for a politics of place crossing generations. This work reveals what Jacobs saw as crucial to education and concludes with suggestions of what Jacobs would see as necessary actions for our fraught times.