JACOBS, JANE

ne Butzner born May 4, 1916, Scranton, Pa., U.S. Canadian urbanologist noted for her clear and original observations on urban life and its problems. After graduating from high school, she became a reporter on the Scranton Tribune, moving to New York City about a year later. While working as a free-lance writer, she met and married an architect, Robert Hyde Jacobs. Already keenly interested in city neighbourhoods and their vitality, both as a writer andincreasinglyas a community activist, she explored urban design and planning at length with her husband. In 1952 she became an associate editor of Architectural Forum, where she worked for a decade. Her first full-length book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), is a brash and passionate reinterpretation of the multiple needs of modern urban places. Translated into Japanese and several European languages, it established her as a force to be reckoned with by planners and economists. The Economy of Cities (1969) discussed the importance of diversity to a city's prosperity, and it, too, challenged much of the conventional wisdom on urban planning. Jacobs moved with her husband to Canada and later became a Canadian citizen. A later work is Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984).