Your favorite artist/ a person you admire.
Today I will talk about someone who I admire in my field, and that person is Jane Jacobs. She was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist best known for her influence on urban studies. Her most influential book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (1961) argued 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". On her book she explains the richness of a multifunctional city, a compact and dense city, where the street, the neighborhoods and the community are vital in the urban culture.
Jane Jacobs was born on 4 May 1916 in a small
town in Pennsylvania in the US and in his youth she migrated to New York,
attracted by the vibrant and noisy city life of this mega city.
There she became interested in urban issues,
without having any degree or specific studies she became editor of the magazine
Architectural Forum. From her articles she criticized the urban tendencies in
the 1950s, that promoted the growth of suburbs extended with individual houses,
the cult of private cars and highways, along with the devaluation of the
traditional urban centers, the preference for the towers and the systematic
demolition of old buildings and neighborhoods in the name of progress and
modernization.
This year on her hundredth anniversary, Jane
Jacobs remains an unavoidable reference to think but mainly to make better
cities and also the personality (being a woman too) and the courage to dare
against something that was pre-established on her society and still on ours. I
think she was a very important pioneer in every way and for that reason I
admire her.
"If the street ends privileging the car
above the people, the street dies and then starts the end of the city"