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Reactions [on my 1979 Massey lectures] were from Anglophones. I'm one. But I'm terrible at French. In fact, there was practically no reaction.

Jane Jacobs

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Jane Jacobs
Age: 89 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 4
Died: 2006
Died: April 25
Author
Economist
Journalist
Sociologist
Urban Planner
Writer
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Jane Butzner
Jane Butzner Jacobs
French
Reactions
Terrible
Fact
Facts
Lectures
Practically
Reaction

More quotes by Jane Jacobs

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A border--the perimeter of a single massive or stretched-out use of territory--forms the edge of an area of 'ordinary' city. Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence.
Jane Jacobs
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...frequent streets and short blocks are valuable because of the fabric of intricate cross-use that they permit among the users of a city neighbouhood.
Jane Jacobs
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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.
Jane Jacobs
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People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists - they are always wrong.
Jane Jacobs
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[ René Lévesque] didn't understand why things do collapse. It's usually a very banal reason why things do collapse. It's not a grand reason, why they collapse economically, at least in the West.
Jane Jacobs
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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.
Jane Jacobs
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Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?
Jane Jacobs
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Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow.
Jane Jacobs
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When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Planners are guided by principles derived from the behaviour and appearance of suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs and imaginary dream cities - from anything but cities themselves.
Jane Jacobs
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One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education.
Jane Jacobs
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Unfortunately [René] Lévesque had so little self confidence in Quebec and in the people themselves, that he fell for that and, yes, he'd say, you know, it might be ruinous for us economically.
Jane Jacobs
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The salient mystery of Dark Ages sets the stage for mass amnesia. People living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. How and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes vitally lost?
Jane Jacobs
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Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.
Jane Jacobs
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Backward cities, or younger cities, or newly forming cities in supply regions, have to develop to a great extent on one another's shoulders. This is one of the terrible things about empires.
Jane Jacobs
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It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.
Jane Jacobs
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We expect too much of new # buildings , and too little of ourselves.
Jane Jacobs
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There were lots of programs over the course of the two referendums and the general tenor of them was that if Quebec were to separate, then Canada would disintegrate.
Jane Jacobs
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Cities never flourish alone. They have to be trading with other cities. My new hypothesis shows why. But also in trading with each other they can't be in too different stages of development, and they can't copy one another.
Jane Jacobs
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In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity.
Jane Jacobs
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What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.
Jane Jacobs