ABSTRACT

In the 1960s and 1970s Jane Jacobs’s specific idea of the city was inspiring. It was a city enlivened and emotionally charged by its users: mixed use, parceled, dense, active public spaces, neighborhoods, identification, engagement, communication, responsibility, solidarity. Connected to this notion was a concept of city production and appropriation that went hand in hand with a small-scale urban economy, its agents, and the way in which they shaped space; with industrial-economic activities at the time still dominated by manufacturing and handcraft, the city was locally anchored and tended to be nationally oriented. This was the situation in the large European or transatlantic cities experienced by their creators. Identifying this urban economic base was a considerably more important aspect of Jane Jacobs’s findings than her occasionally romanticized perception of city life.