The genius of Jane Jacobs

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Highlighted in this article.

What I didn't know before reading it, and what really impressed me, is... that she previously had been an advocate of most of what she criticized in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She was a big fan of the city planners! But she did not cling to her ideas as if they were her very self: instead, she kept her eyes open. And what she saw changed her mind. In particular, in a tour of Philadelphia urban renewal guided by planner Edmund Bacon, she realized that:

"Not only did [Bacon] and the people he directed not know how to make an interesting or a humane street, but they didn’t even notice such things and didn’t care."

A true intellectual giant, who was willing to learn from what she observed going on in the world around her.

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