Jane Jacobs is universally recognized as one of the key figures in
American urbanism. The author of The Death and Life of Great American
Cities, she uncovered the complex and intertwined physical and social
fabric of the city and excoriated the urban renewal policies of the
1950s. As the legend goes, Jacobs, a housewife, single-handedly stood up
to Robert Moses, New York City's powerful master builder, and other city
planners who sought first to level her Greenwich Village neighborhood
and then to drive a highway through it. Jacobs's most effective weapons
in these David-versus-Goliath battles, and in writing her book, were her
powers of observation and common sense.
What is missing from such discussions and other myths about Jacobs,
according to Peter L. Laurence, is a critical examination of how she
arrived at her ideas about city life. Laurence shows that although
Jacobs had only a high school diploma, she was nevertheless immersed in
an elite intellectual community of architects and urbanists. Becoming
Jane Jacobs is an intellectual biography that chronicles Jacobs's
development, influences, and writing career, and provides a new
foundation for understanding Death and Life and her subsequent books.
Laurence explains how Jacobs's ideas developed over many decades and how
she was influenced by members of the traditions she was critiquing,
including Architectural Forum editor Douglas Haskell, shopping mall
designer Victor Gruen, housing advocate Catherine Bauer, architect Louis
Kahn, Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon, urban historian Lewis
Mumford, and the British writers at The Architectural Review. Rather
than discount the power of Jacobs's critique or contributions, Laurence
asserts that Death and Life was not the spontaneous epiphany of an
amateur activist but the product of a professional writer and
experienced architectural critic with deep knowledge about the renewal
and dynamics of American cities.
