Top Jane Jacobs Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Jane Jacobs Biography

Jane Jacobs OC OOnt (born Jane Butzner; May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of city-dwellers. It also introduced the sociological concepts "eyes on the street" and "social capital".

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Jane Jacobs Quotes

A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.

Area, Found, Lasts, Problem, Problems, Solution

To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.

Art, Confusion, Converting, Given, Mistake, Order

The entrepreneurial investors of the time just want to repeat themselves indefinitely and don't know when to stop. You can't do that. And so finally the housing boom, or the auto boom, or whatever it is that's been carrying things along, runs out of customers.

Entrepreneurial, Repeat, Running, Runs, Things, Want

It may be romantic to search for the salves of society's ills in slow-moving rustic surroundings, or among innocent, unspoiled provincials, if such exist, but it is a waste of time.

Exist, Ills, Innocent, Moving, Romantic, Rural Life

Everyone is aware that tremendous numbers of people concentrate in city downtowns and that, if they did not, there would be no downtown to amount to anything--certainly not one with much downtown diversity.

Cities, Downtowns, Everyone, Numbers, People

There is no new world that you make without the old world.

Make, New World, Old, Old World, World

Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances.

Answers, Ideologies, Insecure, Promise, Variety

We've got a [Canadian] prime minister who seems to be intent on destroying our health system and education system. But I have gotten a thicker skin. I can get angry about these things without feeling like vomiting, if you know what I mean.

Destroying, Feelings, Intent, Mean, Skins, Vomiting

Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?

Attrition, Automobiles, Cities, Erosion

Nothing is so clear in history that is it happens for any one thing. It seems that a lot of things come together to make great changes.

Clear, Come, Great Change, Things, Together

Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "It's the 20th century, is this suitable for the 20th century?" This happened before the First World War and it wasn't just the soldiers. You can see it happening if you read the Bloomsbury biographies. It was a reaction to a great extent against Victorianism. There was so much that was repressive and stuffy. Victorian buildings were associated with it, and they were regarded as very ugly. Even when they weren't ugly, people made them ugly. They were painted hideously.

20Th, Ideas, Infatuated, People, See, War

I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.

Awful, Future, Grateful, Independent, People

Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture.

Culture, Give, Giving, Security, Writing

The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility to you take a modicum of responsibility for you.

Cities, City, Experience, Responsibility, Successful, Ties

Maybe part of my animus against the English is the way they have always treated the Irish and they way they still think about the Irish.

Animus, Irish, Think, Thinking, Treated, Way

You don't get new products and services out of sameness.

New Products, Products, Sameness, Services

The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.

Ballet, Cities, Good, Improvisation, Improvisations, Sidewalk

Expanding the Toronto Island Airport will undermine the downtown's economy and liveability and intensify pollution and smog from Oshawa to Oakville. I urge Torontonians to close down this dangerous Trojan horse and get on with planning constructive and delightful ways of using our magnificent lakeside assets.

Airports, Horse, Islands, Lakeside, Pollution, Using

Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.

Cities, Empire, Empires, Help, Want

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

Architect, Capability, Cities, Created, Everybody

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