JANE JACOBS

Jane Jacobs fought for livable communities.

New York City–based neighborhood organizer, urban visionary, and Vietnam War protester: Jacobs wore a lot of hats as a “public intellectual” in the mid-20th century, but she is perhaps best known today for opposing “slum clearance” and supporting neighborhoods. Pitts’ biography is smoothly written and engaging. She highlights Jacobs’ major campaigns and the strategies she promoted. She makes clear both the power of those Jacobs fought against (especially classist and racist developer Robert Moses) and the effectiveness of less powerful but determined people who banded together. The author occasionally uses invented dialogue or adapted quotations to smooth the storytelling in this conversational work that frequently addresses readers directly. Beginning with Jacobs’ Pennsylvania childhood in a “typical American upper-middle-class white Protestant suburban family in the 1920s,” it traces many of her remarkable achievements but notably is not uncritically laudatory. For example, Pitts describes Jacobs’ initial resistance to acknowledging the impact of racism, rejecting her editor’s request that she consider the role of race on Black city residents in her seminal 1961 publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities—although some years later, she did change her mind. Occasional black-and-white photos supplement the text; a greater number would have helped readers better envision many of the concepts and locations introduced. Overall, however, this is an engaging work that places a significant figure in historical context.

An accessible introduction to a 20th-century icon.