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. The power of her ideas of urban development withered in the 1970s and 1980s reciprocally with the advancing super imposition of a large-scale, international economy of headquarters and chain stores- as Jacobs lamented- and the spatial culmination of Fordism in regards to the organization of work and free time, commercial and residential spaces. The breakdown and new, variable composition of activities usually rigidly organized in space and time- work located in one place, defined by one enterprise and one labor relation- go hand in hand with this shift. Today's deepened division of labor, a new kind of "flexibilization", makes it possible to optimize the organization, effectiveness, and even location of each individual activity.
