Eyes on the street. The first time we heard that phrase it was a glorious, cockstrong spring day such as those we've been enjoying of late in the City—legs out, love for sale—and we were sure it had about it an air of the naughty voyeur. No, we were told, it's from the Old Lady herself, from The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Naturally the title intrigued us, young 'sniper though we were, and we tracked down that darling of the remainder tables and, shockingly, read it. She was right about everything, of course—why it's good to leave keys with a shopkeeper, why it's bad to knock down SoHo for a highway (even if that highway might have held above it a great Paul Rudolph masterpiece)—and in the best way: simple and direct, because she could be, because the rhetoric of her day (cue ominous parallelism...) had gone so far awry that the very act of exercising common sense was radical. We're there again, folks. This time without our Jane.

· Jane Jacobs Dies [Globe & Mail]
· Jane Jacobs Speaks [Curbed]

Posted in About The Gutter