This April 30th essay by David Warren is delightful, and captures the essential intellectual curiosity and wonder underlying Jane Jacob's productive life and achievements.
She really helped us to think about how we live in cities, why a little chaos and jumble of business, art, faith, and living (which embraces all that) is as important as letting the locals do the planning.
Here is an excerpt.
Jane Jacobs
April 30, 2006
I last saw Jane Jacobs struggling up Albany Ave., where she lived in Toronto, with one of those walkers we give to the oldies these days. Her head was in the clouds. More precisely, that magnificent white-topped head was trained at the third-storey level of the houses along Albany.
I said hello to her, timidly, thinking, what if she doesn’t remember who I am. (We had been co-conspirators in my Idler magazine days.) She remembered my name and was very warm.
She told me to look towards a turret on one of the houses. “Isn’t that wonderful!” she said.
I thought, yes, turrets are nice, I like Victorian houses, too. But she wasn’t referring to that.
Rather, she was pointing to a course of decorative brickwork, about 20 feet above ground-level.
“I’ve lived on this street for decades, and I never noticed that brickwork!”
She proceeded to extol the advantages of her walker, which, because it assured she would not trip forward, left her free to tilt up her head.
I suddenly remembered, and so did she, that we had once talked about how to look at shops, and other small commercial buildings hugging the sidewalks along urban streets. I had mentioned being driven in a station wagon, flat on my back with a slipped disc. From my automotive bed of pain, I could not see the street level of any building, only the floor above. The unusual angle made Toronto more attractive. It restored the Victorian fabric of downtown. This was because shopkeepers had long since altered their street-level facades, to make them louder -- installing nasty display windows, screaming signs, and all kinds of unmatching appliqué.
