Great Jane

Is Jane Jacobs urban planning's Julia Child? Jane Goodall? Or, as The Village Voice once suggested, its Mother Teresa?

Those inexact accolades all struggle to sum up Jacobs' importance. Her classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, arrived when cities were slicing neighborhoods with interstates and bulldozing historic districts for "urban renewal." Jacobs counter-argued in favor of lively neighborhoods, small business and mass transit. Planning has never been the same--in fact, some think Jacobs deserves a Nobel Prize.

Born in 1916, Jacobs made her mark in New York and has long lived in Toronto. This weekend, though, she'll visit Portland for the first time in years. The grande dame's Saturday appearance at Portland State University kicks off a two-year symposium on Portland's future. The symposium--slated to include lectures, competitions and workshops--launches "The Museum of the City," a still-formative study center founded by PSU prof Chet Orloff.

Jacobs is also flogging her new book, Dark Age Ahead. The book warns of deepening cultural decline, but in a telephone interview, Jacobs said she sees Stumptown as a beacon amid the gloom.

"Portland is a place that gives me great hope," Jacobs says. "The way Portland supports unbuilt and rural land, and views it as a useful complement rather than just a void, is something many places could learn from."

Jacobs says she doesn't like "thinking like a visionary," but she stresses one broad theme: autonomy. She says she's watched Toronto's innovative, city-run affordable housing and planning efforts bleed to death, as officials from higher levels of government usurped control. In this view, some of Portland's least glamorous or popular political tools--like Metro, the elected regional government, and Multnomah County's controversial income tax--are potentially the most instructive.

"Successful cities are always successful teams of cities," she says. "You have to be a team player, and to do that you need local control. Toronto used to have it, but it's been so maltreated by the province, so stripped of its autonomy, that it can't be a team player any more. It's fatal to lose that."

At an age when most people are dead or scouting early-bird specials, Jacobs remains a formidable presence. Still engaged in the nuts-and-bolts policy controversies that are both the most important and the most polarizing, she says flexibility is key to her thinking.

"I always have to remind myself that the world is not divided between activists and idiots," she says. "One group might have the right idea sometimes, the wrong idea others. You have to look at specifics. I avoid the abstract."

Jane Jacobs appears at PSU's Smith Memorial Center 11 am-1 pm Saturday, May 22. She also reads at Powell's City of Books at 7:30 pm Wednesday, May 19.

WWeek 2015