ABSTRACT
In great contrast to the emblem of anti-planning that she became, there was a time when Jane Jacobs idealized the field of city planning and supported urban renewal. With Death and Life, Jacobs dealt an epic blow to a multibillion-dollar regime of federal and local policies, agencies, and real estate development interests; articulated the bankruptcy of prevailing city planning theories; and wrote one of the most important books on cities and city life. In the late 1950s, when Jacobs began the project that became Death and Life, she was not just angry with city planners and urban renewal agencies, she was also rather angry with herself. As she later told her friend Grady Clay, who was at work on related projects, she felt personally responsible and guilty for having believed in urban renewal. Sharing Jane Jacobs's name has produced confusion and many instances of professional misrecognition.
