Eyes on the Street

by Robert Kanigel

Are there igloos in the street?: Interview, Jim Jacobs.

  an extra February: Interview, Jim Jacobs.

  CHAPTER 19: SETTLING IN

  extracted from the freezer chest: According to Decker Butzner, based on his conversation with Burgin Jacobs.

  “I will [tell] the story”: EofC, epigraph.

  “The new enterprises”: EofC, p. 152. Jane was later bothered by her account of Los Angeles after the war, reports Jim Jacobs: Why, more precisely, did it not decline? “There was a big hole there.” For another peek at postwar Los Angeles, see Paul Goldberger, Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (New York: Knopf, 2015), pp. 43–47.

  Manchester and Birmingham: EofC, pp. 86–96.

  Ida Rosenthal: EofC, pp. 51, 56.

  “Division of labor”: EofC, p. 82.

  “where men and women”: EofC, p. 83.

  “New goods and services”: EofC, p. 55.

  “a pleasure to read”: Robert Lekachman to Jason Epstein, July 15 [1968], Random House Papers, Folder 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “she both oversytematizes and overgeneralizes”: Robert McCormick Adams to Jason Epstein, September 11, 1968, Random House Papers, Folder 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “permanently nuance”: Carroll Keeley, “The Vision of Jane Jacobs: An Overview and an Interpretation,” in Ethics, p. 65. In a footnote, p. 64, Keeley suggests that Rousseau, in Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, comes near to supporting Jacobs’s cities-before-agriculture argument: the technological arts of the city, Rousseau wrote, were “necessary to force the human race to apply itself to that of agriculture. Once men were needed in order to smelt and forge the iron, other men were needed in order to feed them.”

  “We cannot…envision”: See Smith, Ur, and Feinman.

  “Bless Jane Jacobs”: Matter, p. 104.

  “It blows cobwebs”: Matter, pp. 101–02.

  “provoked, stimulated”: Matter, pp. 102–04.

  “whole new world to think about”: Roger Sale, Hudson Review (spring 1970).

  “continues the search for vitality”: Gans, “Dream of Human Cities,” p. 28.

  Patricia Daly: This correspondence, in Burns, begins May 20, 1969; Jane’s reply is July 2, Daly’s response September 5.

  “not a single outdoor café”: JJ interview with Peter Gzowski, Ideas That Matter conference, 1997, videotape, Toronto Reference Library, no. 2345212.

  “it transformed Toronto”: Fulford, Accidental City, p. 7.

  “We had one or two”: In “Jane Jacobs’ Annex: A Guided Audio Walking Tour,” produced by Sarah Elton, City of Toronto—Office of the Public Realm, CBC/Radio Canada, and Jane’s Walk.

  “We think we have bought”: JJ to Jason Epstein, July 20, 1970, Random House Papers, Folder 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  dinosaur expert: JJ to Barbara Chisholm, May 6, 1997, Burns, 5.

  “We are going to have more room”: JJ to David Gurin, no date, but listing her new address, David Gurin papers.

  “The carpenter yesterday finished”: JJ to her mother, July 16, 1971, Burns, 4:9.

  Bloor Street’s array of shops: Interview, Jim Jacobs.

  wire scarecrow: This and some other house details drawn from Associated Press article by Hillel Italie, November 23, 2000, Burns, 44:3.

  “You can’t say no to Jane Jacobs”: Interview, Robert Brown, former neighbor of Jane’s at 39 Albany Avenue.

  “white painter”: Interview, Robert Brown.

  Jane rescued her: “Jane Jacobs’ Annex: A Guided Audio Walking Tour,” produced by Sarah Elton, City of Toronto—Office of the Public Realm, CBC/Radio Canada, and Jane’s Walk.

  “all the threshing around”: McCall.

  Jane became a citizen: JJ to her mother, Matter, p. 143. See also Ethics, pp. 26–27.

  Canary Islands: JJ to her mother, April 2, 1971, Matter, pp. 133–34.

  bike project: JJ to her mother, Matter, p. 139; interview, Jim Jacobs.

  “The inn in Kyoto”: JJ to her mother, Burns, 4:9.

  “three black squirrels”: Matter, p. 134.

  adventures of young life and spirit: Interview, Burgin Jacobs.

  “went to a country fair”: JJ to her mother, Matter, p. 135.

  “in a little log cabin”: JJ to her mother, Matter, p. 137.

  “Day before yesterday”: JJ to her mother, December 3, 1972, Burns, 4:9.

  misspelling it: As, for example, in several of Jane’s entries in her 1977 and 1978 date books, Burns, 37. Or in JJ to Decker Butzner, December 13, 1978, and April 22, 1979, Decker Butzner papers.

  “Day after tomorrow”: JJ to Jason Epstein, June 23, 1975, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  CHAPTER 20: OUR JANE

  “We made a lot of new cutters”: JJ to David Gurin, December 12, 1971, David Gurin papers.

  “down to serious work”: JJ to Jason Epstein, June 10, 1970, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “work well enough”: Jason Epstein to JJ, October 8, 1971. Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “You are absolutely right”: JJ to Jason Epstein, October 19, 1971, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  signed a contract: Contract is dated November 1, 1971, and can be found in Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “I’m working hard”: JJ to her mother, July 16, 1971, Burns, 4:9.

  “when was the last time”: A favorite story among the family.

  “the density turn”: See Nikolai Roskamm, “Taking Sides with a Man-eating Shark: Jane Jacobs and the 1960s ‘Density Turn’ in Urban Planning,” in Schubert, pp. 83–92.

  “standard urban theory”: Paul Goldberger, review of Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century by Robert Fishman, New York Times, January 21, 1978.

  “Modern architecture died”: Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1984) p. 9. “The era of American faith in big plans came to an end, symbolically,” Jane said at a panel discussion in 1980 at Faneuil Hall in Boston, “when that building in the huge Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis was dramatically dynamited by the authorities.”

  “A poor man’s penthouse”: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.

  “I don’t think things should be blown up”: JJ, “Futility vs. Taking Chances,” manuscript, no date, no place, Burns, 13.

  “I have to hop to it”: JJ to her mother, June 12, 1974, Matter, p. 98.

  “Our Jane”: For example, Wellman.

  consulted with Jane: Interviews, Eb Zeidler, Max Allen, Jim Jacobs.

  “the most important advance”: “Randall Unveils Plan for $500 Million City in Toronto Harbor,” Toronto Star, May 20, 1970.

  “nasty, tacky collections”: Memo, JJ to Eberhard Zeidler, July 14, 1970, Burns, 13.

  “fantastic election”: JJ to Jason Epstein, December 29, 1972, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “the constantly reminding background”: Interview, David Crombie. Sketch of this era drawn from interviews with John Sewell, Jim Jacobs, Alan Broadbent, Max Allen, Alan Littlewood, and Crombie.

  Jane’s personal influence: See Richard White. A more typical assessment comes from Ken Greenberg, in Walking Home, p. 67: “Jane Jacobs’ observations almost immediately resonated in Toronto…Her ideas quickly came close to being conventional wisdom.”

  “This morning at 6:30 am”: JJ to Jason Epstein, April 5, 1973, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare. See also excerpt from apparently unpublished JJ article: “One cold early spring morning before dawn in 1973…” Burns, box 13.

  “The remark was repeated”: Jane Jacobs, “Can Big Plans Solve the Problem of Renewal?”

  Regent Park: See, for example, Mary W. Rowe; Laurie Greene; Farewell Oak Street.

  live a decent life: Ryan James made this point at a conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History in Toronto in October 2013. See also Ryan James, “From ‘Slum Clearance’ to ‘Revitalisation.’ ”

  St. Lawrence: Account drawn from site visit; Se
well, The Shape of the City; Hume; David L. A. Gordon, “Directions for New Urban Neighbourhoods: Learning from St. Lawrence,” CIP/ACUPP Case Study Series, ca. 1993; Jane Jacobs, “Can Big Plans Solve the Problem of Renewal?”; interview, Alan Littlewood.

  “the best example”: Leblanc.

  “a district-scale experiment”: Klemek, p. 222, caption, figure 12.2.

  “enjoyed the activist part”: Gerard.

  “I realize I have been inflicting”: JJ to Jason Epstein, December 15, 1974, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “I write a little way”: Jane to John and Pete Butzner, April 2, 1976, Burns, 41:1.

  CHAPTER 21: FLUMMOXED

  “When you ask”: JJ to Jason Epstein, August 12, 1976, Random House Papers, RH 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “I always hit some point”: Alexander and Weadick, p. 30.

  “I feel strongly”: Jason Epstein to JJ, February 2, 1977, Random House Papers, Box 1365, ColumbiaRare.

  “There is a fight to be had”: “Mary Rowe on Cities, Nature, and Chaotic Systems,” http://www.​citybui​lderbo​okclub.​org, April 19, 2012.

  “Islands seem to be wonderful”: Sandra Martin, “An Urban Legend,” p. 85. See also Alexander and Weadick, p. 29.

  “I’m very slow”: Warren, p. 16.

  “stand the boredom”: Alexander and Weadick, p. 30.

  “tightly imprisoned”: For JJ to Ned O’Gorman, December 20, 1965, and February 20, 1966 [but probably 1967], Burns, 5:3.

  “all around 200 words or more”: William Talada, “Obfuscation Overload,” Amazon review, July 16, 2014.

  “Oh, I’m so chaotic”: Matter, p. 26.

  “a caterpillar munching”: Harvey, p. 42.

  The Muqaddimah: CityWealth, p. 237.

  recollections of Higgins: CityWealth, p. 240.

  “in the form of a funeral description”: JJ to John Butzner, April 5, 1974, Burns, 4:8.

  extracting from the clergyman: SofS, pp. 86–87, 224.

  “ ‘such wonderful examples’ ”: Matter, p. 26; see also Alexander and Weadick, p. 30.

  “ ‘unaverage’ clues”: D&L, p. 574.

  “solid statistical evidence”: JJ to Stewart Brand, January 17, 1994, Burns, 6:5.

  “an admiring puzzlement”: Ethics, p. 34.

  “When I start exploring”: Ethics, p. 34.

  favored small entities: “Perhaps the stagnation of the United States is irreversible unless and until, no doubt after great turmoil, what is now the United States has divided into a dozen or so separate countries,” Jane Jacobs, “The Responsibilities of Cities,” Queen’s Lecture, Amsterdam, September 1984, Burns, 13:1.

  Norway’s from Sweden: QofS, chapter 3.

  “Here in Toronto”: QofS, p. 51.

  “a tour de force”: Edgar Z. Friedenberg, “Splitting Up,” review of The Question of Separatism, New York Review of Books, November 20, 1980.

  “practically no reaction”: QofS, p. 137.

  refuted “some of the weaker arguments”: Mazer.

  “dreams in very good prose”: Matter, p. 154.

  CHAPTER 22: ADAM, KARL, AND JANE

  “a kind of overhaul”: JJ to M. Marcel Côté, June 30, 1982, Burns, 5:10.

  “For a little while”: CityWealth, p. 3; ensuing pages follow chapter 1.

  Bardou: CityWealth, chapter 2.

  We could beat our brains out: CityWealth, p. 34.

  “was not a demonstration”: CityWealth, p. 128.

  “The difference between a rich backward economy”: CityWealth, p. 63.

  “Faulty feedback to cities”: CityWealth, p. 158.

  “done a great service”: Matter, p. 106.

  “learned, iconoclastic”: Matter, p. 106.

  wasn’t high prices: Matter, p. 108.

  “hated” by economists: JJ to Robert Brandes Gratz, June 10, 1988, Gratz papers.

  “the mysteries of the trade”: Warsh, p. 80. See Warsh’s book and his “The Road Since ‘The Mechanics of Economic Development,’ ” Economic Principals online, September 23, 2007.

  “didn’t inquire too deeply”: Warsh, p. 81.

  His subject was economic growth: Robert Lucas, “On the Mechanics of Economic Development,” Journal of Monetary Economics 22 (1988): 3–42.

  “The consequences for human welfare”: Cited in Warsh, “The Road Since ‘The Mechanics of Economic Development,’ ” Economic Principles online, September 23, 2007.

  as he’d later tell the story: Martin Wolf and Robert Lucas, “Economies and Growth,” Ideas That Matter, 3, no. 3 (undated): 11–14.

  “Is it because innovations are so unpredictable?”: JJ to Graciela Chichilnisky, June 9, 1993, Burns.

  “I will be following very closely”: Robert Lucas, “On the Mechanics of Economic Development,” Journal of Monetary Economics 22 (1988): 37.

  compared Jane’s predictions: Edward L. Glaeser et al., “Growth in Cities, “ Journal of Political Economy 100, no. 6 (December 1992): 1126–1152.

  Canadian inventors: Pierre Desrochers and Samuli Leppälä, “Opening Up the ‘Jacobs Spillovers’ Black Box: Local Diversity, Creativity and the Processes Underlying New Combination,” Journal of Economic Geography 11, no. 5 (2011): 843–63.

  “an economics guru”: John Barber, “Jacobs Embraced as Economic Guru,” Globe and Mail, October 15, 1997. Examples of the literature on Jane Jacobs and economics include: Pierre Desrochers and Gert-Jan Hospers, “Cities and the Economic Development of Nations: An Essay on Jane Jacobs’ Contribution to Economic Theory,” Canadian Journal of Regional Science (spring 2007): 115–30; Clint Ballinger, “More on Jane Jacobs & Economics,” http://www.​open.​salon.​com/​blog/​clintba​llinger, accessed October 10, 2012; Sam Staley, “Disequilibrium and Time in the Urban Economy: Reassessing the Contributions of Jane Jacobs to Development Theory,” Market Process 7, no. 1 (spring 1989): 16–21. See also Brian Tochterman, “Theorizing Neoliberal Urban Development: A Genealogy from Richard Florida to Jane Jacobs,” Radical History Review (winter 2012): 65–87.

  “Jane Jacobs Among the Economists”: Matter, pp. 111–13.

  “great novel of economic development”: Robert E. Lucas Jr., “A Million Mutinies: The Key to Economic Development,” excerpt from his book, Lectures on Economic Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

  “We have determined at last”: Robert Kanigel, On an Irish Island (New York: Knopf, 2012), p. 223.

  CHAPTER 23: WEBS OF TRUST

  At one session: Taped, courtesy Roberta Gratz.

  a cozy summertime community: Interviews, Toshiko Adilman, Jim Jacobs, Caitlin Broms-Jacobs, Alan Littlewood; photos and map provided by Ms. Adilman.

  One summer day: Teleky; interview, Karen Reczuch.

  “Thinking about a useful life”: Girl, p. 33.

  “enchanting”: Erik Wensberg to JJ, May 4, 1989, Burns, 6:4.

  was scarcely reviewed: “Not a first choice,” wrote Maryleah Otto in CM Archive 17, no. 4 (July 1989).

  “But the Sasquatch is imaginary”: Girl, p. 48.

  Hannover, West Germany: See Matter, p. 87.

  “like an international merchant”: Matter, p. 87. See also Ethics, pp. 6, 222; Jane Jacobs, “The Responsibilities of Cities,” Queen’s Lecture, Amsterdam, September 1984, Burns, 13:1.

  “times of terrible piracy”: Matter, p. 163. See also Warren, p. 6.

  in very great time: Systems, p. 218, note for chapter 2. See also Alexander and Weadick; Warren, p. 7.

  That’s the guardian at work: “Eisenhower said, no, no, we never sent any spy planes over Russia,” Jane told Claire Parin in a May 1999 interview [Burns, 22:32], yet there it was, the wreckage of a U2 spy plane the Soviets had shot down, for all the world to see. “And nobody minded because after all that was for National Security…A totally different point of view about the value of honesty in these situations.”

  “not one over-riding system”: Ethics, p. 211.

  “As Machiavelli understood”: Systems, p. 72.
r />   “My characters”: Systems, p. 13.

  “I’ve become disturbed”: Systems, p. 4.

  “questions, answers, second thoughts”: Matter, p. 161.

  “It went over my head”: JJ interview with Peter Gzowski, May 18, 1993, Burns, MS1995_029_CS08_REF.

  “saved myself a lot of work”: Warren, p. 9.

  imagined as a blend: JJ to a reader, July 6, 1998, Burns, 1:6.

  “like talking to a pillow”: Interview, Margie Zeidler.

  “were happy to seize the argumentative bit”: Matter, p. 161,

  “Where the Mafia most resembles”: Systems, p. 94.

  Mafia conclave: Account drawn from Systems, pp. 94, 175; JJ interview with Peter Gzowski, May 18, 1993, Burns, MS1995_029_CS08_REF.

  “Well, it is all true”: JJ to mother, February 11, 1970, Burns, 4:9.

  “A brilliant exploration”: Matter, p. 162.

  “a very cold look”: Alan Ryan, “Cautionary Tales,” review of Systems of Survival, New York Review of Books, June 24, 1993.

  “I don’t think I was successful”: Warren, p. 17.

  her aunt Hannah’s: Account drawn from Alaska, foreword.

  “a great heroine”: Radio interview with Desmond Glynn, January 10, 1996, Burns, MS1995_029_CS09.

  birch-bark basket: JJ to John Branson, August 18, 1994, Burns, 1:7.

  “had hooked me”: Alaska, p. xv.

  “got such a bang out of it”: Robin Roger, p. 6.

  “overcome ignorance”: Alaska, p. 5.

  “improved organization”: Alaska, p. xviii.

  They’d gathered brochures: Details of the family’s trip to Alaska, maps, brochures, plans, and the like, can be found at Burns, mostly Boxes 1, 14–18.

  “along a crooked airpath”: Alaska, p. 260.

  “I had lived in the Rocky Mountains”: Alaska, p. 63.

  “treasure trove”: JJ to John and Pete Butzner, July 26, 1994, Burns, 1:7.

  “demolished by the tidal wave”: “Epilogue,” early manuscript draft, Burns, 16:7. Compare with Alaska, p. 262.

  “the three happiest months”: Robin Roger, p. 6. Jane “ignored the aborted draft” she had worked on half a century before, she wrote Jason Epstein on July 25, 1996, choosing to start anew from Hannah’s original manuscript instead.