ABSTRACT
Toronto, Canada, where Jane Jacobs lived from 1968 until her death in 2006, essentially the second half of her life, provides an excellent opportunity for such a study. Her life and work there have so far escaped comprehensive analysis, with the focus instead being on her earlier years in New York. This chapter examines four transformative episodes in the city's planning history between about 1968 and 1978, Jacobs's first decade in Toronto, and the time over which the paradigm shift is generally thought to have occurred, and assesses her role in them. The episodes are the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway, cessation of large-scale urban renewal, design of the inner-city St. Lawrence neighborhood, and a substantial revision of the city's official plan known as the Central Area Plan; all four are considered, locally at least, to be events or developments in which Jacobs played a key part.
