Jane Jacobs Is Gone!

The NYT reports:

Jane Jacobs, the writer and thinker who brought penetrating eyes and ingenious insight to the sidewalk ballet of her own Greenwich Village street and came up with a book that challenged and changed the way people view cities, died today in Toronto, where she lived. She was 89.

As a young man working in urban studies I was tremendously influenced by her work, especially "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" which cut the props out from under the urban planning establishment of that era.

I hadn't realized then that half a century later I would miss her. She was one of the great ones.

Now she can start work on a scathing critique of the Heavenly City.