Jane Jacobs (1916-2006): an appreciation

摘要

Jane Jacobs led me astray. As a geography undergraduate at Liverpool University in the mid-1960s I spent much of my time reading books that were not on course reading lists. The most readable book and most influential (as proven by the fact that I have never forgotten its message) was Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). Concern for new roads destroying communities was just becoming an issue at this time in Liverpool and other British cities and therefore Jacobs's defence of US cities chimed with my own growing interest in cities. I was intending to become a town planner and found Jacobs's critique of the profession intriguing. I read Jacobs's book in my second year and a year later I found myself being interviewed for a planning assistant position with London County Council. To prepare for the latter, I read a serious book on planning, the Buchanan Report on future traffic needs through and around cities (Ministry of Transport, 1963). When it came to the end of the interview and T was offered the opportunity to ask the interview panel questions, I ventured to query what they thought of the conundrum that building a sixteen-lane highway down London's Oxford Street to accommodate traffic forecasts would obviously destroy the shopping centre thus actually resulting in the generation of no traffic. My question was considered amusing and there ended my planning career before it had even started. I blame Jane Jacobs; this appreciation of her works is my very belated thank you.