Jane Jacobs quotes - page 3

Jane Jacobs was an American journalist, author, and urban activist renowned for her influence on urban studies and city planning. Her groundbreaking book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" challenged conventional thinking about city development. She advocated for community-centered urban design and remains an inspiration for city planners worldwide. Here are 63 of her quotes:

You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.

Jane Jacobs

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.

Jane Jacobs

The primary conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those whose interests are with the emergence of new economic activities.

Jane Jacobs

Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?

Jane Jacobs

Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to much the same thing in the end.

Jane Jacobs

Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality.

Jane Jacobs

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

Jane Jacobs

Subsidiarity is the principle that government works best most responsibly and responsively when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses. Fiscal accountability is the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money.

Jane Jacobs

It is hopeless to try to convert some borders into seams.

Jane Jacobs

I would spend a nickel on the subway and go arbitrarily to some other stop and look around there. So I was roaming the city in the afternoons and applying for jobs in the morning. And one day I found myself in a neighborhood I just liked so much...it was one of those times I had put a nickel in and just invested something. And where did I get out? I just liked the sound of the name: Christopher Street - so I got out at Christopher Street, and I was enchanted with this neighborhood, and walked around it all afternoon and then I rushed back to Brooklyn. And I said, "Betty I found out where we have to live."

Jane Jacobs

The other threat to the security of our tradition, I believe, lies at home. It is the current fear of radical ideas and of people who propound them. I do not agree with the extremists of either the left or the right, but I think they should be allowed to speak and to publish, both because they themselves have, and ought to have, rights, and once their rights are gone, the rights of the rest of us are hardly safe. Extremists typically want to squash not only those who disagree with them diametrically, but those who disagree with them at all. It seems to me that in every country where extremists of the left have gotten sufficiently in the saddle to squash the extremists of the right, they have ridden on to squash the center or terrorize it also. And the same goes for extremists of the right. I do not want that to happen in our country.

Jane Jacobs