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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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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
Develop
Forming
Terrible
Backward
Cities
Supply
Another
Empires
Great
Regions
Things
Extent
Younger
Shoulders
Newly

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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.
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New ideas often need old buildings.
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People who think of themselves as exiles, I find, can never really put their lives together, really.
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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.
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Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality.
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Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure.
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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.
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To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.
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Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.
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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?
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