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Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs
The first major biography of the irrepressible woman who changed the way we view and live in cities, and whose influence is felt to this day.
Jane Jacobs was a phenomenal woman who wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged in thousands of impassioned debates--all of which she won. Robert Kanigel's revelatory portrait of Jacobs, based on new sources and interviews, brings to life the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the mother who raised three children; the journalist who honed her skills at Architectural Forum and Fortune before writing her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; and the activist who helped lead a successful protest against Robert Moses's proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village.
Jane Jacobs was a phenomenal woman who wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged in thousands of impassioned debates--all of which she won. Robert Kanigel's revelatory portrait of Jacobs, based on new sources and interviews, brings to life the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the mother who raised three children; the journalist who honed her skills at Architectural Forum and Fortune before writing her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; and the activist who helped lead a successful protest against Robert Moses's proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2016
89 people are currently reading
1824 people want to read
About the author
Robert Kanigel
21 books135 followersRobert Kanigel was born in Brooklyn, but for most of his adult life has lived in Baltimore. He has written nine books.
"The Man Who Knew Infinity," his second book, was named a National Book Critics Circle finalist, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and a New York Public Library "Book to Remember." It has been translated into Italian, German, Polish, Greek, Chinese, Thai, and many other languages, and has been made into a feature film, starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015.
Kanigel's 2012 book, "On an Irish Island," set on a windswept island village off the coast of Ireland, was nurtured by a Guggenheim fellowship and later awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
"Eyes on the Street," his biography of Jane Jacobs, the far-seeing author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and fearless champion of big-city life, was published by Knopf in 2016.
His most recent book, "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry," is a biography of the man who revolutionized our understanding of the Homeric epics. In support of this project Kanigel was awarded an NEH Public Scholar award.
"The Man Who Knew Infinity," his second book, was named a National Book Critics Circle finalist, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and a New York Public Library "Book to Remember." It has been translated into Italian, German, Polish, Greek, Chinese, Thai, and many other languages, and has been made into a feature film, starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015.
Kanigel's 2012 book, "On an Irish Island," set on a windswept island village off the coast of Ireland, was nurtured by a Guggenheim fellowship and later awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
"Eyes on the Street," his biography of Jane Jacobs, the far-seeing author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and fearless champion of big-city life, was published by Knopf in 2016.
His most recent book, "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry," is a biography of the man who revolutionized our understanding of the Homeric epics. In support of this project Kanigel was awarded an NEH Public Scholar award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
April 14, 2025
This book confirmed something I’ve always believed: that one person, open to learning and thinking deeply about what is learned, can be the spark that ignites dramatic, positive change. Or, to use a favorite quote from a Pete Seeger song, "One and one and 50 make a million."
Jane Jacobs, a writer with an independent, ornery bent, is best known for "Death and Life of Great American Cities" and for triumphing over a New York City planning powerhouse called Robert Moses, who was once heard to fume that those opposing his neighborhood-destroying highway plans were nothing but a bunch of mothers.
Jane came from a Scranton family that encouraged independent thinking. She had a rough time at school, brilliant though she was, because she had a problem with rules and arbitrary pronouncements. In elementary school she convinced other students not to promise to brush their teeth every night for the rest of their lives because she knew that you should never make a promise that would be impossible to keep.
After high school and an internship at the local paper, she went to New York, gradually finding better and better writing jobs and being exposed to many fields. The last job before she became a full-time author of books was at "Architectural Forum," where she initially bought into the modernist styles and urban renewal approaches of the day.
On one assignment, she went to Philadelphia to see the great things that planner Edmund Bacon (father of Kevin, by the way) was doing in that city, and she came away with an uneasy feeling about the way whole communities were being wiped out to build "better" ones. Her uneasiness increased after she met William Kirk, who ran a settlement house in East Harlem. He took her on numerous walks around the neighborhood and explained the loss of community, friendships, businesses, and more that had resulted from the new and sterile "projects."
Meanwhile, she was living in the lovely, messy, interesting, and diverse neighborhood of West Greenwich Village. She could see what made for vitality.
One day her boss got invited to speak at the first ever Harvard design and community planning symposium. He couldn't go and suggested she take his place. She was terrified of public speaking but agreed to go if she could talk about what she wanted to, not the suggested topic. In the talk, she expressed her growing realization that planning was being done wrong. She created a sensation. Her best-known book followed, extolling further the delightful energetic mess from which wonderful neighborhoods and cities arise.
I liked this line from the biography: "The problems of metropolitan government would be solved 'not by abstract logic or elegance of structure, but in a combination of approaches, by trial, error and immense experimentation in a context of expediency and conflicting interests.' "
Biographer Robert Kanigel favors lots of italics and repetition of key points. He is very good at building up a crescendo. After reviewing her life, much of it in Toronto (where the family moved because the boys were about to be drafted), and her child-rearing (not terrific but encouraging of lively discussion), and her books, he concludes that her life and work was about more than preserving quirky streets. He puts it all under the category of "civilization" -- exploring what civilization consists of, how to preserve it, how to keep it blooming.
Jane Jacobs, a writer with an independent, ornery bent, is best known for "Death and Life of Great American Cities" and for triumphing over a New York City planning powerhouse called Robert Moses, who was once heard to fume that those opposing his neighborhood-destroying highway plans were nothing but a bunch of mothers.
Jane came from a Scranton family that encouraged independent thinking. She had a rough time at school, brilliant though she was, because she had a problem with rules and arbitrary pronouncements. In elementary school she convinced other students not to promise to brush their teeth every night for the rest of their lives because she knew that you should never make a promise that would be impossible to keep.
After high school and an internship at the local paper, she went to New York, gradually finding better and better writing jobs and being exposed to many fields. The last job before she became a full-time author of books was at "Architectural Forum," where she initially bought into the modernist styles and urban renewal approaches of the day.
On one assignment, she went to Philadelphia to see the great things that planner Edmund Bacon (father of Kevin, by the way) was doing in that city, and she came away with an uneasy feeling about the way whole communities were being wiped out to build "better" ones. Her uneasiness increased after she met William Kirk, who ran a settlement house in East Harlem. He took her on numerous walks around the neighborhood and explained the loss of community, friendships, businesses, and more that had resulted from the new and sterile "projects."
Meanwhile, she was living in the lovely, messy, interesting, and diverse neighborhood of West Greenwich Village. She could see what made for vitality.
One day her boss got invited to speak at the first ever Harvard design and community planning symposium. He couldn't go and suggested she take his place. She was terrified of public speaking but agreed to go if she could talk about what she wanted to, not the suggested topic. In the talk, she expressed her growing realization that planning was being done wrong. She created a sensation. Her best-known book followed, extolling further the delightful energetic mess from which wonderful neighborhoods and cities arise.
I liked this line from the biography: "The problems of metropolitan government would be solved 'not by abstract logic or elegance of structure, but in a combination of approaches, by trial, error and immense experimentation in a context of expediency and conflicting interests.' "
Biographer Robert Kanigel favors lots of italics and repetition of key points. He is very good at building up a crescendo. After reviewing her life, much of it in Toronto (where the family moved because the boys were about to be drafted), and her child-rearing (not terrific but encouraging of lively discussion), and her books, he concludes that her life and work was about more than preserving quirky streets. He puts it all under the category of "civilization" -- exploring what civilization consists of, how to preserve it, how to keep it blooming.
January 9, 2017
Kanigel sets himself three tasks in this book--to answer who Jane Jacobs was, what she wrote, and how it was significant--and succeeds at all of them. The writing is lively but thorough, not rushed. His portrayal of Jacobs is sympathetic but he takes pains to articulate criticisms of her theses. She comes across as a humanist in the best sense of the word: someone who cares about people enough to study and understand them.
October 13, 2016
Unsurprisingly, I am a huge Jane Jacobs fan. Though the gaps in her thinking have been well documented at this point her influence remains strong based on the fact that she captured something essential about the joy of thriving city life. I think about her eyes on the street all the time as I walk around the city. She seems like one of those unique people who can live largely unburdened by social expectations and truly lived the life she wanted. That, more than anything, remains inspirational to me.
October 3, 2016
A superb, enormously enjoyable biography of the irrepressible Jane Jacobs! Highly recommended! Here's my fuller review:
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/boo...
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/boo...
June 9, 2017
Kanigel's book is a biography of Jane Jacobs that weaves together the details of her life with her work. He places her in a larger social context.
"The smallness of big cities." This was the title, Jane, or an editor, gave one section of her essay. "We are apt to think of big cities as equaling big enterprises, little towns, as equaling little enterprises," Jane wrote. "Nothing could be less true." 160
"The logic of the projects," she wrote, "is the logic of egocentric children, playing with pretty blocks and shouting. 'See what I made!" 162
"All across those years, modernist dreams, too, had been placed on hold. But now, with the guns stilled after World War II and every sign of buoyant prosperity returning-automobiles taking on the Forward Look, air travel granting mile-high vistas-modernism reasserted itself. Something close to a social consensus emerged, one rejecting the old, ragged past, proposing to scrape it away, often literally, and replace it with a swept-clean, squared-away future: superblocks of Corbusian towers in town and great, green park-like tracts in the new suburbs." 166-167
"With every writing problem, she looked three ways at once: Toward a body of knowledge and fact. Toward her reader and what he or she "needed" in order to keep turning the pages. And toward her own inner self and its expressive needs." 185
"Cities required "exuberant diversity," the endless mixing of every kind of everything. And that demanded the satisfaction of four conditions: 1) mixed primary use; 2) short blocks; 3) buildings of varied ages, including old ones; and 4) dense concentrations of people." 190
"What we were inventing, was issue-oriented politics," focused not on individuals or parties, but on the daily life of one's community." 228
"the 1963 razing of Penn Station, the calamity that had sparked the historic-preservation movement." 268
"Where local politicians stood on the Spadina Expressway," wrote John Sewell, a friend and collaborator of Jane's for most of her time in Toronto, "was the defining issue of the day. Two opposing visions of the city had rarely been presented in such a powerful, volatile and bitter way." 285
"The Spadina was supposed to slash down through the heart of the city from Highway 401, which had been built in the early 1950s as a modest intercity highway but would morph into a commuter artery at some points eighteen lanes wide." 285-286
"...the provincial governor, Bill Davis, quashed it, famously declaring to the Ontario legislature, "If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good place to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop." 289
"During the late 1960s and early 1970s, English-speaking Montrealers, scared off by the political tulmult in Quebec, began moving to Toronto, tens of thousands of them, laden with money and talent. Energetic, increasingly Asian newcomers, 75,000 of them a year, were moving in, too." 298
"Bobbi Speck. "She never showed emotion....She was expressionless, like an ancient tortoise." 302
"One clue to the failure of conventional macroeconomic thinking, Jane argued, was "stagflation," an economic malediction combining high unemployment and high prices-stagnation and inflation, together. The two miseries weren't "supposed" to go together, but in 1975, for example, the United States recorded 8.5 percent unemployment and 9.1 percent inflation, both painfully high." 330
"city dwellers were "interconnected, not interrelated." That is, the city wasn't a place where most people knew your name; on the other hand, it tied you by invisible threads to everyone else, and to the larger organism that was Chicago, or L.A. Urbanites, Rowan wrote, were bound by "the involuntary accumulation of public contacts rather than the purposeful cultivation of private intimacies." 366
"In his book of the same name, Alan Ehrenhalt describes what he calls a "great inversion," in which the old postwar pattern of well-off suburbs and poor city centres has begun to turn inside out, with dead, dying, and abandoned malls and decrepit suburban ranch houses flanking cities of rebirth and rejuvenation." 371
"Mike Davis...It is Jane Jacobs-the Mother Teresa of neighbourhoods..." 383
"...in the early 1960s, three women wrote three classic books, launching three social movements that changed the world: Betty Friedan's, The Feminine Mystique, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Jane's The Death and Life of Great American Cities." 391
"She had the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet," David Crombie once said of her." 396
"The smallness of big cities." This was the title, Jane, or an editor, gave one section of her essay. "We are apt to think of big cities as equaling big enterprises, little towns, as equaling little enterprises," Jane wrote. "Nothing could be less true." 160
"The logic of the projects," she wrote, "is the logic of egocentric children, playing with pretty blocks and shouting. 'See what I made!" 162
"All across those years, modernist dreams, too, had been placed on hold. But now, with the guns stilled after World War II and every sign of buoyant prosperity returning-automobiles taking on the Forward Look, air travel granting mile-high vistas-modernism reasserted itself. Something close to a social consensus emerged, one rejecting the old, ragged past, proposing to scrape it away, often literally, and replace it with a swept-clean, squared-away future: superblocks of Corbusian towers in town and great, green park-like tracts in the new suburbs." 166-167
"With every writing problem, she looked three ways at once: Toward a body of knowledge and fact. Toward her reader and what he or she "needed" in order to keep turning the pages. And toward her own inner self and its expressive needs." 185
"Cities required "exuberant diversity," the endless mixing of every kind of everything. And that demanded the satisfaction of four conditions: 1) mixed primary use; 2) short blocks; 3) buildings of varied ages, including old ones; and 4) dense concentrations of people." 190
"What we were inventing, was issue-oriented politics," focused not on individuals or parties, but on the daily life of one's community." 228
"the 1963 razing of Penn Station, the calamity that had sparked the historic-preservation movement." 268
"Where local politicians stood on the Spadina Expressway," wrote John Sewell, a friend and collaborator of Jane's for most of her time in Toronto, "was the defining issue of the day. Two opposing visions of the city had rarely been presented in such a powerful, volatile and bitter way." 285
"The Spadina was supposed to slash down through the heart of the city from Highway 401, which had been built in the early 1950s as a modest intercity highway but would morph into a commuter artery at some points eighteen lanes wide." 285-286
"...the provincial governor, Bill Davis, quashed it, famously declaring to the Ontario legislature, "If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good place to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop." 289
"During the late 1960s and early 1970s, English-speaking Montrealers, scared off by the political tulmult in Quebec, began moving to Toronto, tens of thousands of them, laden with money and talent. Energetic, increasingly Asian newcomers, 75,000 of them a year, were moving in, too." 298
"Bobbi Speck. "She never showed emotion....She was expressionless, like an ancient tortoise." 302
"One clue to the failure of conventional macroeconomic thinking, Jane argued, was "stagflation," an economic malediction combining high unemployment and high prices-stagnation and inflation, together. The two miseries weren't "supposed" to go together, but in 1975, for example, the United States recorded 8.5 percent unemployment and 9.1 percent inflation, both painfully high." 330
"city dwellers were "interconnected, not interrelated." That is, the city wasn't a place where most people knew your name; on the other hand, it tied you by invisible threads to everyone else, and to the larger organism that was Chicago, or L.A. Urbanites, Rowan wrote, were bound by "the involuntary accumulation of public contacts rather than the purposeful cultivation of private intimacies." 366
"In his book of the same name, Alan Ehrenhalt describes what he calls a "great inversion," in which the old postwar pattern of well-off suburbs and poor city centres has begun to turn inside out, with dead, dying, and abandoned malls and decrepit suburban ranch houses flanking cities of rebirth and rejuvenation." 371
"Mike Davis...It is Jane Jacobs-the Mother Teresa of neighbourhoods..." 383
"...in the early 1960s, three women wrote three classic books, launching three social movements that changed the world: Betty Friedan's, The Feminine Mystique, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Jane's The Death and Life of Great American Cities." 391
"She had the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet," David Crombie once said of her." 396
December 1, 2019
All of my fifth grade class was divided into two parties (our teacher’s idea, so we could learn about the political process) and at the suggestion of one of our classmates (Tom G., I think) we chose the party names of Country Bumpkins and City Slickers. I was the most ardent of the City Slickers Party. Little did I realize it at the time, but I already adhered to the philosophy of one of the three great revolutionary women of the 1960’s. I knew the names of Rachel Carson and Betty Friedan, of course, could recognize their pictures, and read their ground-breaking books. But not having grown up in New York, I only learned of Jane Jacobs quite recently.
Jacobs (1916 – 2006), who became the patron saint of the historic neighborhood preservation movement, led the fight to save Greenwich Village from Robert Moses’s planned expressway expansion (too late to save the Bronx, unfortunately) and wrote the bible of modern urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I have long wanted to read that book and am waiting for my copy to come in. Apparently the demand for Death and Life exceeds even that of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, because in the meantime, I was able to check out and read that book, which makes mention of the earlier Jane Jacobs book. While waiting for it, I managed to check out the new biography by Robert Kanigel, Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs.
Jane grew up in what seems to have been a very happy family in Scranton, Pennsylvania and she was always a little eccentric never one to obtain the conventional professional credentials. Nor was she the model perfect student; in fact, she was expelled from third grade. Why? Not only did she refuse to take an oath that she would brush her teeth twice every day for the rest of her life, but she urged her classmates not to take the oath either and argued with the teacher about it. Years later, she was arrested for demonstrating against the Vietnam War, and she moved the whole family, including two draft-aged sons, to Toronto, Canada, where she continued to write and to advocate for threatened urban areas.
After WWII, the accepted notions of urban planning envisioned central business districts in one part of town and nice quiet green residential subdivisions in another part of town, linked to each other by expressways. Cities fought against what they called urban blight; old low income neighborhoods were cleared away and replaced with shiny new modern housing projects surrounded by lots of green. Jane Jacobs called for a radical departure from that standard 1950's doctrine, and her ideas are now more widely accepted. The best cities, she thought, were characterized by mixed use, high density, diversity (socioeconomic and ethnic) and energetic life. She was the critic who would look at a drawing of a proposed development and object that there were no people in the streets
So, what kind of person was Jane Jacobs? From what Kanigel tells us, she sounds like a highly intelligent and eccentric character, but I’m not sure I would have found her genial on a personal level. Her deliberate killing of a cat so she could dissect it didn't particularly endear me to her, either. She had strong opinions about nearly everything and sometimes managed to offend people with whom she disagreed. As one of them said, “What a dear, sweet grandmother she isn’t.”
Kanigel’s writing is a pleasure to read, and the photographs help the characters come alive.
Jacobs (1916 – 2006), who became the patron saint of the historic neighborhood preservation movement, led the fight to save Greenwich Village from Robert Moses’s planned expressway expansion (too late to save the Bronx, unfortunately) and wrote the bible of modern urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I have long wanted to read that book and am waiting for my copy to come in. Apparently the demand for Death and Life exceeds even that of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, because in the meantime, I was able to check out and read that book, which makes mention of the earlier Jane Jacobs book. While waiting for it, I managed to check out the new biography by Robert Kanigel, Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs.
Jane grew up in what seems to have been a very happy family in Scranton, Pennsylvania and she was always a little eccentric never one to obtain the conventional professional credentials. Nor was she the model perfect student; in fact, she was expelled from third grade. Why? Not only did she refuse to take an oath that she would brush her teeth twice every day for the rest of her life, but she urged her classmates not to take the oath either and argued with the teacher about it. Years later, she was arrested for demonstrating against the Vietnam War, and she moved the whole family, including two draft-aged sons, to Toronto, Canada, where she continued to write and to advocate for threatened urban areas.
After WWII, the accepted notions of urban planning envisioned central business districts in one part of town and nice quiet green residential subdivisions in another part of town, linked to each other by expressways. Cities fought against what they called urban blight; old low income neighborhoods were cleared away and replaced with shiny new modern housing projects surrounded by lots of green. Jane Jacobs called for a radical departure from that standard 1950's doctrine, and her ideas are now more widely accepted. The best cities, she thought, were characterized by mixed use, high density, diversity (socioeconomic and ethnic) and energetic life. She was the critic who would look at a drawing of a proposed development and object that there were no people in the streets
So, what kind of person was Jane Jacobs? From what Kanigel tells us, she sounds like a highly intelligent and eccentric character, but I’m not sure I would have found her genial on a personal level. Her deliberate killing of a cat so she could dissect it didn't particularly endear me to her, either. She had strong opinions about nearly everything and sometimes managed to offend people with whom she disagreed. As one of them said, “What a dear, sweet grandmother she isn’t.”
Kanigel’s writing is a pleasure to read, and the photographs help the characters come alive.
January 7, 2018
Disclaimer: I love Jane Jacobs. I knew this going into this biography. The one thing I learned here that impressed me the most was that Jane nearly failed out of high school, didn't get a college degree, and yet was pretty much universally described as a "genius"; her theories about cities actually being utilized and put into play around the world and, more importantly, succeeding. That is damn impressive. So, 5 stars for providing readers a nuanced, sensitive, and vibrant portrait of this woman. Bravo.
Here are my critiques, in no particular order:
-It really bothered me that Kanigal pretty much ignored the fact that Jane was a woman until the last handful of pages in the book, when he compared her to Betty Freidan and Rachel Carson. I understand why he made this comparison, and he explains it pretty well, albeit maybe too briefly. But that last handful of pages was not enough. Maybe he was not interested - or not able? - to talk about Jane's achievements in relation to her gender. Maybe he thought her story could stand on it's own without a more thorough analysis through a feminist lens. Whatever the reason, it marks a strike against this otherwise excellent biography.
-I thought Kanigal was at his best when he was describing Jane's parents, her early life, her first couple decades in NYC, and everything surrounding the "Death and Life" book. Great content there. The book starts to lag a bit in the latter half when he talks about her other books; it's more formulaic, and not as gripping: "she had this idea, she wrote about this, the book took a long time, and this was the critical reception." Boring. I don't necessarily thing biographies even need to include this type of writing; nonetheless, I do see why it was included here. Kanigal is much stronger when he talks about who Jane was as a person and what she did outside of her writing in the post "Death and Life" part of her career.
-His writing style. Kanigal packs a lot of nuance into this book - which is appreciated. However, a side effect of this is his writing style is not always as clear and unhampered as I think it could have been. Something about the punctuation bothered me, and I can't even fully articulate what it was. I don't think I am too much of a grammar snob but I could have easily played editor with this book, taken a red pen to it, and rewritten dozens of murky sentences. The other thing that bothered me was how he handled Jane's daughter Mary's name. As an adult, Mary legally changed her name to Burgin, but Kanigal doesn't mention this until at least 300+ pages in. So she was "Mary" for about two-thirds of the book and then, suddenly, "Burgin" for the last third. He should have just mentioned the name switch straight off the bat, which would have been easier for a reader to take.
FINALLY: did anyone else have a major WTF moment at the beginning of the book when Kanigal describes how Jane captured a stray NYC cat, DROWNED IT in one of the rivers, brought it back to her apartment, SKINNED IT (!) and boiled it's remains in one of her kitchen pots so she could reconstruct it's bones?!?! Again: WTF? Who does that? Did she ever use that pot again to cook her food in? What the heck? I NEED ANSWERS. This is disturbing and not normal.
Here are my critiques, in no particular order:
-It really bothered me that Kanigal pretty much ignored the fact that Jane was a woman until the last handful of pages in the book, when he compared her to Betty Freidan and Rachel Carson. I understand why he made this comparison, and he explains it pretty well, albeit maybe too briefly. But that last handful of pages was not enough. Maybe he was not interested - or not able? - to talk about Jane's achievements in relation to her gender. Maybe he thought her story could stand on it's own without a more thorough analysis through a feminist lens. Whatever the reason, it marks a strike against this otherwise excellent biography.
-I thought Kanigal was at his best when he was describing Jane's parents, her early life, her first couple decades in NYC, and everything surrounding the "Death and Life" book. Great content there. The book starts to lag a bit in the latter half when he talks about her other books; it's more formulaic, and not as gripping: "she had this idea, she wrote about this, the book took a long time, and this was the critical reception." Boring. I don't necessarily thing biographies even need to include this type of writing; nonetheless, I do see why it was included here. Kanigal is much stronger when he talks about who Jane was as a person and what she did outside of her writing in the post "Death and Life" part of her career.
-His writing style. Kanigal packs a lot of nuance into this book - which is appreciated. However, a side effect of this is his writing style is not always as clear and unhampered as I think it could have been. Something about the punctuation bothered me, and I can't even fully articulate what it was. I don't think I am too much of a grammar snob but I could have easily played editor with this book, taken a red pen to it, and rewritten dozens of murky sentences. The other thing that bothered me was how he handled Jane's daughter Mary's name. As an adult, Mary legally changed her name to Burgin, but Kanigal doesn't mention this until at least 300+ pages in. So she was "Mary" for about two-thirds of the book and then, suddenly, "Burgin" for the last third. He should have just mentioned the name switch straight off the bat, which would have been easier for a reader to take.
FINALLY: did anyone else have a major WTF moment at the beginning of the book when Kanigal describes how Jane captured a stray NYC cat, DROWNED IT in one of the rivers, brought it back to her apartment, SKINNED IT (!) and boiled it's remains in one of her kitchen pots so she could reconstruct it's bones?!?! Again: WTF? Who does that? Did she ever use that pot again to cook her food in? What the heck? I NEED ANSWERS. This is disturbing and not normal.
November 15, 2016
So glad to get, finally, the back story on Jane Jacobs, a fascinating, and impactful woman. To her we owe the planning consciousness of protecting cities, mixing uses, eschewing soulless high rise complexes and "dead" suburbia and--a biggie for me--historic preservation.
Also realizing that she did an amazing thing in that she was pretty much able to sit down and write books containing basically only her ideas of how the world could be better. So many such ideas (she wrote many books with two more in the works at her death.)
In essence, though, Jane's thinking on cities comes down to: Vitality is good with little thought to things like well-being. The person who might like the peace and calm and quiet of a high rise complex or a suburb, is invisible to Jane. She sees only those who relish living with noisy industry or three brothels--as Jane did at one time--among all the rest of city variety.
Reading this book--actually I listened to the Audible version which is excellent--one can really picture Jane in all her bluster and self-confidence, loud arguments and quick retorts. Yet there are some holes in the picture--due to Jane herself, not to the biographer.
For example, Jane's quick departure to Canada. Yes, one can understand her desire to protect her sons from the Vietnam draft. But she was leaving behind the neighborhood she had lived in, and fought to protect, for years. And all without a single good-bye or back ward glance.
And how did the move impact her adolescent daughter, torn away completely from friends and environment? Was it really enough that they were all such a close family that anything outside them didn't matter that much? But if so, is such isolation healthy?
The daughter Mary, who becomes Bergin, certainly has a classic teen rebellion, leaving home at 16 to live in wilderness on the other side of the country. And, during this time, Mary/Bergin hitchhikes across the country, alone. During the winter.
Jane's reaction--apparently a single casual comment to a friend: isn't she a bit young to be off on her own? But no need for an answer and no more thought on the topic.
The Jacobs parents were noted for the freedom they allowed their children, from their desire to let the children pursue their own passions unrestrained by parents. But could it be that such freedom may be a nice word for not-really-caring? Or at least not caring as much as for having the time to write her books.
Also realizing that she did an amazing thing in that she was pretty much able to sit down and write books containing basically only her ideas of how the world could be better. So many such ideas (she wrote many books with two more in the works at her death.)
In essence, though, Jane's thinking on cities comes down to: Vitality is good with little thought to things like well-being. The person who might like the peace and calm and quiet of a high rise complex or a suburb, is invisible to Jane. She sees only those who relish living with noisy industry or three brothels--as Jane did at one time--among all the rest of city variety.
Reading this book--actually I listened to the Audible version which is excellent--one can really picture Jane in all her bluster and self-confidence, loud arguments and quick retorts. Yet there are some holes in the picture--due to Jane herself, not to the biographer.
For example, Jane's quick departure to Canada. Yes, one can understand her desire to protect her sons from the Vietnam draft. But she was leaving behind the neighborhood she had lived in, and fought to protect, for years. And all without a single good-bye or back ward glance.
And how did the move impact her adolescent daughter, torn away completely from friends and environment? Was it really enough that they were all such a close family that anything outside them didn't matter that much? But if so, is such isolation healthy?
The daughter Mary, who becomes Bergin, certainly has a classic teen rebellion, leaving home at 16 to live in wilderness on the other side of the country. And, during this time, Mary/Bergin hitchhikes across the country, alone. During the winter.
Jane's reaction--apparently a single casual comment to a friend: isn't she a bit young to be off on her own? But no need for an answer and no more thought on the topic.
The Jacobs parents were noted for the freedom they allowed their children, from their desire to let the children pursue their own passions unrestrained by parents. But could it be that such freedom may be a nice word for not-really-caring? Or at least not caring as much as for having the time to write her books.
November 29, 2024
I'm giving this a five because of its subject -- the irrepressible genius Jane Jacobs -- not because of the product of her first major biographer. The book is comprehensive and well-researched, but it has some writing flaws and tics that are annoying and maybe even a little demeaning to its subject. But it still well worth reading and (a key attribute of excellent books) makes you want to read many of the source materials that it references.
Jane Jacobs changed how we see city life. Things that we take for granted now, like historic preservation of old town centers and the awful living conditions that cheap high-rise apartments create, were not only unknown when she first criticized them, but they were the aspirations of a couple of generations of city planners and people in power in govt. The idea was that to fix slums, you cleared them out and put in updated apartments that were incorporated into properties landscaped with small parks and playgrounds. Rid yourself of dilapidated housing, noisy industrial activity, thru traffic on busy streets, and annoying small businesses -- and you would have a peaceful setting that mirrored suburban ideals while keeping the poor in their place. Whether these ideas came from benign motives or racist exclusionism, they were how city leaders proceeded in post-WWII to change urban landscapes.
Jane Jacobs blew that apart. Living in Greenwich Village at the time and having spent a decade writing about industry (iron and steel, and then architecture), she could see from her own experience that urban slums were hardly the hell-holes they were portrayed to be. She lived in a neighborhood that was targeted as slum clearance, but she knew that the residents were of mixed income and loved their community. They fixed their homes, knew their neighbors, patronized local restaurants and shops. They liked the small scale of the homes. They liked the activity on the street and the random entertainment that ensued. They were in a place where they belonged.
As a reporter, she had opportunities to see how neighborhoods, cities and developments were working out. She listened and learned and thought about it over and over. And she concluded -- backed up with anecdotes and statistics -- that the planners were going about things in almost exactly the wrong way. First in a couple of magazine articles and a brief speech at a conference, and then in a seminal book published in 1961, "Death and Life of Great American Cities," she laid out her revolutionary thesis. She showed what was wrong with conventional thinking and also provided some concrete ideas about what to do instead. Almost instantly, her ideas were recognized as having immense truths, and the entire discussion changed (a paradigm shift, to use a term that came into being at about the same time as her views). Actually, the world changed. Literally.
From there, Jacobs became a public intellectual, taking on other massive topics with her contrarian tastes. This included the field of macroeconomics, that is, how to run national economies, and then the causes of cultural decline. In each, she provided massive insights on her own and also lines of inquiry that scholars and philosophers and economists and planners have followed up for decades. Her influence remains strong, even dominant. It's an amazing set of achievements.
This book goes through those triumphs, and it puts them in the context of a full life. Jacobs was born in Scranton, PA, to a successful doctor. She and her siblings were encouraged to be independent thinkers and doers to a degree hard to imagine in the early 20th century. Undoubtedly, she was a genius anyway, but she was allowed to let that genius run wild. Like most geniuses, she was bored with school, and she decided against college (her parents saved money for college for her) and moved as a teen to NYC and lived with her sister. She took a variety of secretarial jobs during the Depression and got some writing assignments for "Vogue" magazine and then a job with a metals industry publication. It was an unconventional life for a young woman, but her smarts and charm seemed to win people over. She did try college for a while, taking courses at Columbia University, but then dropped off when Barnard College (the women's affiliate of Columbia at the time) insisted she take prerequisite courses and adhere to their rules. And she was off on her own as a journalist again, taking a position with the govt. during the WWII effort. Then it was on to architectural reporting before the big break fell into her hands -- or rather, she made the break for herself.
The biographer, Robert Kanigel, tells this story pretty well. You learn about Jane's wonderful personality, her love of argument but also her warmth to people around her. He quotes from her writing and from letters from her bosses that indicate her ability to see beyond the strictures of her assignments -- sees the germs of her originality. And he does a good job of showing how circumstance and luck led her to get an assignment to write about the emergence of city redevelopment plans, and how that led her to really think about those plans and to conclude they weren't solving problems. That she was fearless about saying so almost goes without saying because the biographer has already laid the groundwork for showing how intellectually fearless she was.
From there, she took a leave of absence to write "Death and Life," and then her world was transformed. To his credit, the biographer doesn't get too wrapped up in the accolades that came to Jane (as he points out, she didn't like most of them either), and instead writes about how she fought to have the time to continue to learn and think and write. And, by the way, this was while raising three kids and becoming a community activist. You feel the energy that she must have exuded, she and her architect husband, too. It's quite a package, and the author makes you wish you knew her and could keep up with her for even a couple of days of activity.
I love the anecdotes in this book. One about Jane in 3rd grade, having been told by her dad never to promise something you can't live up to, and saying to a dentist who came to her school class that she couldn't promise to brush her teeth EVERY night because, surely, there would be nights when she would forget or wouldn't be able to. And getting other kids in the class to rescind their pledges, too! Or meeting her future husband, being asked to marry on a second date and saying no, and then calling him a few days later to ask if he'd changed his mind; when he said no he hadn't, she said, "I have," and they married a couple months later. Great stuff. Jane Jacobs comes to life both as an intellectual and as a person of her time. And I didn't even get into the stuff about the family moving to Toronto in 1968, which the biographer says was primarily to enable their sons to avoid the Vietnam War draft.
My complaints, referenced at the start, are relatively minor. But they are persistent. One is the author's use of italics to emphasize various words. C'mon, we're smart enough to read the sentences without the italics. Another is his explanation of things that are pretty obvious, or that at the maximum need to be explained only once. As an example, he tells you that Jane as a journalist thought about her audience (with "thought" in italics!). Well, of course she did. I realize his point is that not all journalists do that, and that if you are able to do it, you are more effective. Ok. But you don't have to say it four times in describing her early career. The author also gives his opinion a bunch of times, using "I" to be clear that he's injecting his ideas. I think I object in principle to a biographer doing this, at least in the body of the book. As an appendix, sure. But in the book, I'm not all that happy with it. And in the case of this book, the insights of those "I" comments are so mundane that they're definitely not worth it. This is different than a biographer who says that certain things aren't known or are disputed. That's certainly fine. But there are better ways of bringing that perspective than the way he did it, and it somehow diminishes her by putting him on a par.
Overall, this is a strong book. I have read "Death and Life," and now I'll track down Jane Jacobs's other books. I have noticed things about cities that Jane Jacobs was the first to identify (or the first prominent person to identify), and I really appreciate how the biographer finds famous people and experts who say the same thing: that Jane Jacobs had a gift for putting into words and for documenting things that the rest of us sense.
Jane Jacobs changed how we see city life. Things that we take for granted now, like historic preservation of old town centers and the awful living conditions that cheap high-rise apartments create, were not only unknown when she first criticized them, but they were the aspirations of a couple of generations of city planners and people in power in govt. The idea was that to fix slums, you cleared them out and put in updated apartments that were incorporated into properties landscaped with small parks and playgrounds. Rid yourself of dilapidated housing, noisy industrial activity, thru traffic on busy streets, and annoying small businesses -- and you would have a peaceful setting that mirrored suburban ideals while keeping the poor in their place. Whether these ideas came from benign motives or racist exclusionism, they were how city leaders proceeded in post-WWII to change urban landscapes.
Jane Jacobs blew that apart. Living in Greenwich Village at the time and having spent a decade writing about industry (iron and steel, and then architecture), she could see from her own experience that urban slums were hardly the hell-holes they were portrayed to be. She lived in a neighborhood that was targeted as slum clearance, but she knew that the residents were of mixed income and loved their community. They fixed their homes, knew their neighbors, patronized local restaurants and shops. They liked the small scale of the homes. They liked the activity on the street and the random entertainment that ensued. They were in a place where they belonged.
As a reporter, she had opportunities to see how neighborhoods, cities and developments were working out. She listened and learned and thought about it over and over. And she concluded -- backed up with anecdotes and statistics -- that the planners were going about things in almost exactly the wrong way. First in a couple of magazine articles and a brief speech at a conference, and then in a seminal book published in 1961, "Death and Life of Great American Cities," she laid out her revolutionary thesis. She showed what was wrong with conventional thinking and also provided some concrete ideas about what to do instead. Almost instantly, her ideas were recognized as having immense truths, and the entire discussion changed (a paradigm shift, to use a term that came into being at about the same time as her views). Actually, the world changed. Literally.
From there, Jacobs became a public intellectual, taking on other massive topics with her contrarian tastes. This included the field of macroeconomics, that is, how to run national economies, and then the causes of cultural decline. In each, she provided massive insights on her own and also lines of inquiry that scholars and philosophers and economists and planners have followed up for decades. Her influence remains strong, even dominant. It's an amazing set of achievements.
This book goes through those triumphs, and it puts them in the context of a full life. Jacobs was born in Scranton, PA, to a successful doctor. She and her siblings were encouraged to be independent thinkers and doers to a degree hard to imagine in the early 20th century. Undoubtedly, she was a genius anyway, but she was allowed to let that genius run wild. Like most geniuses, she was bored with school, and she decided against college (her parents saved money for college for her) and moved as a teen to NYC and lived with her sister. She took a variety of secretarial jobs during the Depression and got some writing assignments for "Vogue" magazine and then a job with a metals industry publication. It was an unconventional life for a young woman, but her smarts and charm seemed to win people over. She did try college for a while, taking courses at Columbia University, but then dropped off when Barnard College (the women's affiliate of Columbia at the time) insisted she take prerequisite courses and adhere to their rules. And she was off on her own as a journalist again, taking a position with the govt. during the WWII effort. Then it was on to architectural reporting before the big break fell into her hands -- or rather, she made the break for herself.
The biographer, Robert Kanigel, tells this story pretty well. You learn about Jane's wonderful personality, her love of argument but also her warmth to people around her. He quotes from her writing and from letters from her bosses that indicate her ability to see beyond the strictures of her assignments -- sees the germs of her originality. And he does a good job of showing how circumstance and luck led her to get an assignment to write about the emergence of city redevelopment plans, and how that led her to really think about those plans and to conclude they weren't solving problems. That she was fearless about saying so almost goes without saying because the biographer has already laid the groundwork for showing how intellectually fearless she was.
From there, she took a leave of absence to write "Death and Life," and then her world was transformed. To his credit, the biographer doesn't get too wrapped up in the accolades that came to Jane (as he points out, she didn't like most of them either), and instead writes about how she fought to have the time to continue to learn and think and write. And, by the way, this was while raising three kids and becoming a community activist. You feel the energy that she must have exuded, she and her architect husband, too. It's quite a package, and the author makes you wish you knew her and could keep up with her for even a couple of days of activity.
I love the anecdotes in this book. One about Jane in 3rd grade, having been told by her dad never to promise something you can't live up to, and saying to a dentist who came to her school class that she couldn't promise to brush her teeth EVERY night because, surely, there would be nights when she would forget or wouldn't be able to. And getting other kids in the class to rescind their pledges, too! Or meeting her future husband, being asked to marry on a second date and saying no, and then calling him a few days later to ask if he'd changed his mind; when he said no he hadn't, she said, "I have," and they married a couple months later. Great stuff. Jane Jacobs comes to life both as an intellectual and as a person of her time. And I didn't even get into the stuff about the family moving to Toronto in 1968, which the biographer says was primarily to enable their sons to avoid the Vietnam War draft.
My complaints, referenced at the start, are relatively minor. But they are persistent. One is the author's use of italics to emphasize various words. C'mon, we're smart enough to read the sentences without the italics. Another is his explanation of things that are pretty obvious, or that at the maximum need to be explained only once. As an example, he tells you that Jane as a journalist thought about her audience (with "thought" in italics!). Well, of course she did. I realize his point is that not all journalists do that, and that if you are able to do it, you are more effective. Ok. But you don't have to say it four times in describing her early career. The author also gives his opinion a bunch of times, using "I" to be clear that he's injecting his ideas. I think I object in principle to a biographer doing this, at least in the body of the book. As an appendix, sure. But in the book, I'm not all that happy with it. And in the case of this book, the insights of those "I" comments are so mundane that they're definitely not worth it. This is different than a biographer who says that certain things aren't known or are disputed. That's certainly fine. But there are better ways of bringing that perspective than the way he did it, and it somehow diminishes her by putting him on a par.
Overall, this is a strong book. I have read "Death and Life," and now I'll track down Jane Jacobs's other books. I have noticed things about cities that Jane Jacobs was the first to identify (or the first prominent person to identify), and I really appreciate how the biographer finds famous people and experts who say the same thing: that Jane Jacobs had a gift for putting into words and for documenting things that the rest of us sense.
November 7, 2016
A friend recommended this to me as a very well written biography. It is, and it's very densely written. If you love biographies with some meat to them you will love this one. It took me a while to read it.
I've never read any of Jacob's books, in fact I had never even heard of her. As a self-confirmed country girl who much prefers for her neighbors to be few and far between, this was an unlikely book for me to pick up.
Despite my lack of affinity for cities and economics, I still enjoyed this book because I found Jane herself to be a very inspiring person. She was very intelligent and determined. She had a lifelong curiosity and love of learning. She didn't back down when she believed strongly in something, even if it went against the status quo. She was very active in fighting against things that she felt would be detrimental to the communities that she lived in. She went up against some pretty big muckety-mucks. And won. Her first book was published when she was 45.
What I took away from this book; the sky is the limit, folks. It's never too late. Put your mind to something and do it. Take the initiative to learn what you need to in order to accomplish your goals. Be yourself regardless of what other people think.
I've never read any of Jacob's books, in fact I had never even heard of her. As a self-confirmed country girl who much prefers for her neighbors to be few and far between, this was an unlikely book for me to pick up.
Despite my lack of affinity for cities and economics, I still enjoyed this book because I found Jane herself to be a very inspiring person. She was very intelligent and determined. She had a lifelong curiosity and love of learning. She didn't back down when she believed strongly in something, even if it went against the status quo. She was very active in fighting against things that she felt would be detrimental to the communities that she lived in. She went up against some pretty big muckety-mucks. And won. Her first book was published when she was 45.
What I took away from this book; the sky is the limit, folks. It's never too late. Put your mind to something and do it. Take the initiative to learn what you need to in order to accomplish your goals. Be yourself regardless of what other people think.
March 13, 2017
Kanigel’s portrait of Jacobs is rich, affectionate, frank, and offers much to think about today.
I tried to look at the last two cities I’ve lived in recently through Jacobs’s eyes and was dismayed. They don’t look much like the cities she admires. In one, the walkable section has small shops and nearby apartments, but is quite gentrified and expensive, with home decorations, bars, art galleries, potted shrubs along the sidewalk. Little more than a mile away, a more modest section, with apartments only a block away, offers services and fast-food restaurants. To get from the Staples to small restaurant, I would have to cross the parking lot, walk half a block along a commercial strip to a traffic light, wait to cross a wide, busy street, and then walk back passing more parking lots on the other side to the restaurant. People don’t bother: they drive instead. Not a pedestrian in sight. Not even a tree.
So is this just nostalgia for a small-scale, more intimate way of life, scrubbed against the demands of commerce, convenience, and the car? But I would not like to live in Jacobs's city either. Is there a middle ground? What would Jane say?
I tried to look at the last two cities I’ve lived in recently through Jacobs’s eyes and was dismayed. They don’t look much like the cities she admires. In one, the walkable section has small shops and nearby apartments, but is quite gentrified and expensive, with home decorations, bars, art galleries, potted shrubs along the sidewalk. Little more than a mile away, a more modest section, with apartments only a block away, offers services and fast-food restaurants. To get from the Staples to small restaurant, I would have to cross the parking lot, walk half a block along a commercial strip to a traffic light, wait to cross a wide, busy street, and then walk back passing more parking lots on the other side to the restaurant. People don’t bother: they drive instead. Not a pedestrian in sight. Not even a tree.
So is this just nostalgia for a small-scale, more intimate way of life, scrubbed against the demands of commerce, convenience, and the car? But I would not like to live in Jacobs's city either. Is there a middle ground? What would Jane say?
December 14, 2016
Eyes on the Street chronicles Jacobs’s life from her middle-class upbringing in Pennsylvania, where from an early age she showed signs of low deference to authority figures, to her formative early adulthood after she moved to New York City at the height of the Great Depression and began writing for a variety of publications.
Jacobs is presented as an intellectual first and foremost and an urbanist secondly. Capacious curiosity drew her to every subject: ‘This is what marks her more indelibly than cities,’ writes Robert Kanigel, ‘this interest in the whole lively world around her including ideas for their own sake.’ This would eventually become the cornerstone of Jacobs’s seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as well as many others.
The biography recounts countless other critical events including her famous fights with Robert Moses, an FBI investigation and her family’s escape to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Happily, it strikes a balance, avoiding hagiography and digging deep to understanding what made Jacobs really tick.
Jacobs is presented as an intellectual first and foremost and an urbanist secondly. Capacious curiosity drew her to every subject: ‘This is what marks her more indelibly than cities,’ writes Robert Kanigel, ‘this interest in the whole lively world around her including ideas for their own sake.’ This would eventually become the cornerstone of Jacobs’s seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as well as many others.
The biography recounts countless other critical events including her famous fights with Robert Moses, an FBI investigation and her family’s escape to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Happily, it strikes a balance, avoiding hagiography and digging deep to understanding what made Jacobs really tick.
March 29, 2017
This is a tremendous book, an informative, thoroughly researched biography. Robert Kanigel calmly and meticulously goes over the whole life of the infamous Jane Jacobs, making relevant highlights and augmenting his narrative with a slew of quotes, references, and real-life stories. The book is very approachable even for someone with hardly any familiarity with the work of Jane Jacobs and other urban theorists; the author builds a cohesive narrative of Jane’s development as a thinker and explains relevant concepts, important personalities and landmarks: Ebenezer Howard, garden cities, Robert Moses, Pruitt-Igoe etc. Kanigel maintains a consistent steady pace throughout the book, and “Death and Life”, just like Jane’s activism, do not even make an appearance until the second half, so despite its approachability, it might not be a particularly engaging read for someone without an interest in the lesser-known details of the life of Jane Jacobs, simply by the virtue of its exemplary thoroughness.
January 8, 2017
Eyes on the Street, The Life of Jane Jacobs by Robert Kanigel
A Review by Becky Holland
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN-10: 0307961907
ISBN-13: 978-0307961907
* I was sent this book by the publishing company to review. I received no pay, just this book to add to my collection.
Rating: 4.0 Stars
Jane Jacobs could have been one of the women who inspired Maya Angelou’s poems. A journalist who was an advocate for tradition, growth and holding to the foundation of which this country was built, Jane was an activist, a mother, an author and was favorite in the US and Canada.
Robert Kanigel’s research into Jacobs was very detailed and well-done. He highlighted areas of Jacobs’ life, her intelligence and her activities as if he walked with her daily.
Kanigel brings Jane Jacobs to life for many who didn’t know of her and her work. The writing is very perceptive about Jacobs, and very informative.
Good Read.
A Review by Becky Holland
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN-10: 0307961907
ISBN-13: 978-0307961907
* I was sent this book by the publishing company to review. I received no pay, just this book to add to my collection.
Rating: 4.0 Stars
Jane Jacobs could have been one of the women who inspired Maya Angelou’s poems. A journalist who was an advocate for tradition, growth and holding to the foundation of which this country was built, Jane was an activist, a mother, an author and was favorite in the US and Canada.
Robert Kanigel’s research into Jacobs was very detailed and well-done. He highlighted areas of Jacobs’ life, her intelligence and her activities as if he walked with her daily.
Kanigel brings Jane Jacobs to life for many who didn’t know of her and her work. The writing is very perceptive about Jacobs, and very informative.
Good Read.
December 14, 2017
I read this book and decided to tackle Jane Jacobs' THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES at the same time. I really enjoyed how Robert Kanigel brought out so many different aspects of her life: her writing, family, activism, her observing and questioning nature, and her growth in the field of urban design despite not having a college degree. I also liked having a biography of a woman who lived both a conventional and very unconventional life. The book had some very clear maps that brought out the places in New York and Toronto where she lived, wrote, and practiced her urban activism. Robert Kanigel's writing style is somewhat akin to Jane Jacobs so the two books meshed well when I read them together. In all, a very interesting biography of a unique woman in American and Canadian history.
December 24, 2016
This is a thorough account of Jane Jacobs, albeit boring and too detailed. It is written in 3 parts, her background, career, and post-fame time in Canada. I would have liked to have been raised in either the house where she was raised or the one she created for her children. I agree with her ideas about urban planning. I liken the relationship of professional planners to the poor they serve to wealthy white Americans dropping into developing countries on service vacations- feeling better for patronizing the residents making their lives seemingly better without having asked what they needed in the first place.
March 22, 2017
I loved learning about Jane Jacobs! Why don't we hear more about this powerful, smart, ecologically driven women in our history classes? She is a wonderful example of someone who spoke truth to power. What a fighter! Her life inspired me, and I am thankful that she saved Washington Square Park from traffic, and the the neighborhood vibrancy of Greenwich Village survives--however dimly in our car-crazed cities--thanks to her work. I can't wait to visit Toronto one day and appreciate her mark on that city. The book was perhaps about 15% too long... and the rest of my bookgroup complained about it. But I still read every word.
June 23, 2020
An engaging exploration of the inspired writer who changed how we look at cities, economics and ourselves. Kanigel's approach is intimate and sympathic, following Jane Jacobs from childhood through WWII "propaganda" writing and her groundbreaking early work on architecture to the combination of activism and bold thinking that redefined the city and defeated New York "master builder" Robert Moses. Moving to Canada in 1968, Jacobs continued to explore new ideas, influenced Toronto's development approach, and successfully managed to balance "celebrity" status with the dogged pursuit of a human-scaled, family-centered life.
January 15, 2018
Satisfying enough. Sometimes it is hard to read about your heroes. They are. It always heroic. That said, it provided a very clear and cogent analysis of Jacobs and her early life and the foundation of her thinking which led to death and life of great American cities. This sacred text redefined city planning in 1963, setting off a shift in the dogma. Ultimately it felt light. Less a biography but a documentary skimming over the details for plot points on which the. Are stove turns.neither great for the initiatives, or the uninitiated about this woman who played a critical role in urban planning and social activism.
January 20, 2018
Jane Jacobs and Michael Moore have a lot in common, though in different arenas—that one person, speaking out, can effect change.
After going on several walking tours in NYC where reference was made to Jane Jacobs, I knew I had to learn more about her. This book is a good beginning. Jane Jacobs fought city planners —read: Robert Moses— who were interested in making the car the mode of transportation through Manhattan. She understood the lifeblood of the streets, of the neighborhoods. The plans for his highway through Washington Square Park were dismissed. All I can say is “Thank you, Jane”. I wish you had come to Brooklyn, too.
After going on several walking tours in NYC where reference was made to Jane Jacobs, I knew I had to learn more about her. This book is a good beginning. Jane Jacobs fought city planners —read: Robert Moses— who were interested in making the car the mode of transportation through Manhattan. She understood the lifeblood of the streets, of the neighborhoods. The plans for his highway through Washington Square Park were dismissed. All I can say is “Thank you, Jane”. I wish you had come to Brooklyn, too.
October 23, 2016
A fascinating, meticulously-researched and comprehensive biography of Jane Jacobs, the New York (and later, Toronto) activist whose landmark work "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" had a dramatic impact on our understanding of what makes cities work and how urban planning should be thought about in different ways. The cover is woefully designed, but the book is wonderful. I look forward to reviewing it for the pages of the Englewood Review of Books in November. If you've read Jacobs' "Death and Life," I highly recommend this biograph to you.
August 5, 2017
A thoroughly engaging portrait of Jane Jacobs, the paradigm-shifter of city planning and urban renewal ideology. This book revealed how this one impactful woman kicked off the preservation movement, turned urban renewal dogma on its head, reconsidered economics, fought off giants, and won near-universal acclaim for wielding her outsized intellect in the service of making/keeping cities vibrant. She truly moved mountains. Of course it helped that Mrs. Jacobs had the intellect, curiosity and desire to move those mountains. A very entertaining book.
July 28, 2018
I came across Jane Jacobs’ name when reading a recent book “triumph of the city” and was curious about the woman who was revered as the visionary and founding thinker of city. City is for people. So true. Her idea at the time was revolutionary and now has become mainstream. It is influential in understanding what is a good city and shaping how to build a better city. It is also great reading about her life lived mainly first in New York, then Toronto, the two of the cities I loved dearly.
March 6, 2017
The life of Jane Jacobs is a compelling story on many levels. Jacobs had a profound impact about how we think of cities. She challeneged the assumptions of her society. She was self taught. One of the strongest themes comes early in the book when we find out the roots of her intellect and insights. Anyone interested in cities will benefit from taking on this book.
February 17, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this look at Jacobs’ life, career, ideas, writing process & influence. I’m grateful the author included the criticisms her ideas & work have drawn, both in real time and over time.
January 8, 2017
I was unaware of this member of the triumvirate that included Rachel Carson and Betty Friedan. If that is the case for you, this bio of Jane Jacobs is well worth the investment.
Read
February 10, 2017Biog J173k 2016
March 4, 2017
All in all I enjoyed this. A useful introduction to an influential person that isn't all that widely known outside of certain circles.
June 17, 2017
enjoyed this very much although I have not read Ms Jacobs' books. They are next on my list
July 16, 2018
An unlikely visionary.
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