Jacobs, Jane

Jacobs, Jane (b. Butzner)

(1916–  ) urban theorist, author; born in Scranton, Pa. Associate editor of Architectural Forum (1952–68), she gained a reputation for attacking urban planners for destroying diverse older neighborhoods with expressways and housing projects; her most influential work was The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). She served on the New York Community Planning Board and was active in trying to save communities such as Greenwich Village. In 1968 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where her architect-husband, Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr., had accepted a position. There she was briefly a consultant to the urban-legal program of the University of New York Law School, but she concentrated on her own writings such as Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1989) and Systems of Survival (1992).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.