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| Jane Jacobs, a staunch advocate of cities, dies |
zepher1003
发贴: 298 
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 2006-04-27 01:23 
      Jane Jacobs, a staunch advocate of cities, dies Spunky author pushed for diversity and self-sustenance By Hillel Italie Associated Press April 26, 2006 Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence whose classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities transformed ideas about urban planning, died yesterday, her publisher said. Mrs. Jacobs, a longtime resident of Toronto, was 89. Mrs. Jacobs died in her sleep yesterday morning at a Toronto hospital, which she entered a few days ago, according to Random House publicist Sally Marvin. Mrs. Jacobs' son, James, was with her at the time. The author, who would have turned 90 on May 4, had been in poor health. A native of Scranton, Pa., Mrs. Jacobs lived for many years in New York before moving to Toronto in the late 1960s. She and her husband, architect Robert Jacobs Jr., were unhappy their taxes were supporting the Vietnam War, and they eventually made Canada their permanent home. Robert Jacobs died in 1996. Her impact transcended borders. Basing her findings on deep, eclectic reading and firsthand observation, Mrs. Jacobs challenged assumptions that she believed damaged modern cities - that neighborhoods should be isolated from each other, that an empty street was safer than a crowded one, that the car represented progress over the pedestrian. Her priorities were for integrated, manageable communities, for diversity of people, transportation, architecture and commerce. She also believed that economies needed to be self-sustaining and self-renewing, relying on local initiative instead of centralized bureaucracies. "She inspired a kind of quiet revolution," her longtime editor, Jacob Epstein, said yesterday. "Every time you see people rise up and oppose a developer, you think of Jane Jacobs." Death and Life, published in 1961, evolved from opposing the standards of the time to becoming a standard itself. It was taught in urban studies classes throughout North America and sold more than half a million copies. City planners in New York and Toronto were among those who noted its importance, and her book became an essential text for "New Urban" communities such as Hercules, Calif., and Civano, Ariz. Mrs. Jacobs also received a number of prizes, including a lifetime achievement award in 2000 from the National Building Foundation in Washington. Mrs. Jacobs was a dedicated, even iconic activist. In the 1950s, she was interrogated by the U.S. government over her loyalty to the country, and in the 1960s she was arrested during protests against the Vietnam War. She successfully opposed a Toronto highway project not long after moving there and was a distinctive presence at public hearings. "You sort of fell in love with Jane when you met her," Mr. Epstein said. "She was exuberant, original, strong-minded and a very kind woman." Her most famous confrontation came in the early '60s, when she helped defeat a plan by New York's park commissioner, Robert Moses, to build an expressway through Washington Square, their rivalry immortalized in the 2004 play Boozy. During a 2000 interview with the Associated Press, Mrs. Jacobs recalled the city hearing where she first laid eyes on Mr. Moses. "As is often the case in these hearings, the officials speak first and then they leave before they hear the opposition. So he was one of the first speakers," she said. "He was furious and he stood up there, inside the railed enclosure, and not where most speakers spoke - outside where the public microphone was. He was privileged. "He gripped this railing and he said, in dismissing scornfully our plan to have no more than the existing road and better not even that, he said, 'These protests are just by a bunch of, a bunch of ... a bunch of mothers!'" Born in 1916, Mrs. Jacobs was a doctor's daughter with a compulsion to question authority, an unfortunate quality if she happened to be one of your students - even more unfortunate if you were trying to tell her something about cities. "One of our teachers, I guess it was the fourth grade, told me cities form because there's a waterfall around and so there is power," she recalled. "Well, I was very dubious about this and immediately told her that in our neighborhood park there was a waterfall and it had nothing to do with the city." During the Depression, on days when job hunts went nowhere, she would invest a nickel in the subway and explore a neighborhood: the diamond district, the garment district, the meatpacking district. Soon, she made money out of her passion, writing articles for various magazines. One of her favorite phrases was "in the real world." She continued a long tradition of American pragmatism, from Benjamin Franklin to John Dewey and William James. She believed ideas should come from experience as opposed to the other way around. Death and Life emerged from her reporting. Not only did it attack canonical beliefs in city planning, it attacked such canonical figures as Mr. Moses and historian Lewis Mumford. Mrs. Jacobs thought cities suffered from an anti-city bias among planners, the romanticization of a more rural way of life. Because of this, she wrote, vital communities were being torn down simply because they were "crowded," other neighborhoods were fatally isolated and parks were being constructed without regard to their surrounding environment. She specifically criticized Mr. Mumford, author of The Culture of Cities, for his misguided attachment to the anti-city philosophy, and Mr. Moses for his dogmatic attachment to the automobile. Her arguments were clearly heard. Mr. Mumford, who had praised Mrs. Jacobs' magazine work as "devastatingly just," dismissed her as a "sloppy novice." Mr. Moses told her publisher, Random House, that Death and Life was "intemperate and inaccurate, and also libelous." But Mrs. Jacobs' book was widely praised, and in her subsequent works, she examined the ideas outlined in Death and Life from a variety of perspectives: Cities and the Wealth of Nations focused on the economy; Systems of Survival on morals; The Nature of Economies on science and ecology. Her final book, Dark Age Ahead, came out in 2004. Mrs. Jacobs is survived by her three children, James, Edward and Mary. |
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zepher1003
发贴: 298
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2006-04-27 01:25
'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' remember this book, it is a milestone 
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zhangrui2005
发贴: 254
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2006-04-27 12:08
楼主说得对，JANE的《美国大城市的生与死》，确实是城市问题研讨的一个重要的里程碑。在美国，稍对城市问题有研究的人都知道这部著作的分量，甚至有人把它当做研究现代城市问题的“圣经”。 初读此书，以为并没什么了不得，觉得其中谈到的一些问题及解决方法，比如恢复社区生活、“STREET EYE”等，都不太适用于我们国内。因为我们国内土地供应紧张，导致土地功能经常需要综合利用（MIXED USE）。大凡市中心开发块地，都是地下停车、一二楼购物中心、剩余的裙房做办公，塔楼做住宅。这窄浅的一方土地被利用得那叫一个彻底，大家似乎对“STREET EYE”没更多的好感，似乎更迫切地需要人与人之间相处的距离感和私密性。于是，在土地市场价值规律和交通方式更新的共同作用下，我们的城市不断扩张：一个个风格各异的小区沿着城市干道建成，高层遮蔽了市中心的天空。但在享受城市更新的丰硕成果的同时，我们忽然感觉到了曾经有过的有益的社区生活的消失，以及切身体会的城市问题：堵车（各位自己填空吧，在有这样的情况的城市的哥们请举手）、空气污染、晚上市中心寂静的空城、城市旧区的治安问题，等等。 美国大城市的规划是走过弯路的，这一弯，导致了多少经济损失和社会问题，我不清楚，也无法统计。但在JANE的书里，一针见血地指出了这些城市发展中的弊病，提出了城市发展的理想化模式。越读到后来，越发现她对城市问题理解的透彻。而这些透彻的分析和建设意见，恰恰值得我们今天放在案头，时时警醒自己和自己的客户不要再犯书中提到的城市建设中的错误，以期一个更美好的城市。 2004年这位睿智的老人又有新作问世，书名叫“DARK AGE AHEAD”。看书名，不知所云。而前天，老人去世了。即便我想不出这位对城市如此忠诚和热爱的老人会在书中写些什么，但怀着对老人的学术态度的尊敬和信任，还是赶紧在网上买了一本，希望既是纪念也是学习。 |
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chenluping
发贴: 33
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2006-04-27 22:59
哎,一句也看不懂啊,可以翻译一下吗? |
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槲栎
发贴: 395
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2006-04-28 00:54
哀悼下。 《死与生》那本书确实精彩。 不过她总是举的格林威治似乎和曼哈顿没什么关系呀。曼哈顿现在不也很好？想知道大家怎么看的。 |
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