Enough With Jane Jacobs Already

The Wall Street Journal (June 29, 2010) - It has been almost 50 years since the publication of Jane Jacobs's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," and the book has been cited to support almost every position in debates about city planning and urban policy. Jacobs's ideas have become ubiquitous all over the country. At a recent meeting of the Urban Land Institute, a national organization of real-estate developers and professionals, for example, she seemed to be quoted by almost every speaker—developers, architects and academics all cited her work when talking about the future and how to do progressive development. Her book is on reading lists at every planning school and urban-studies program. Yet the time may have come to give Jacobs (who died in 2006) and her ideas something of a rest. [...]