The Death and Life of Vancouver?

While leafing through my much-loved copy of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) the other day, I wondered what the urban theorist and community organizer would think of the highway projects threatening to dissect Vancouver and destroy rare wetlands where she alive today.

I recently discovered that Jacobs, known for asking city planners and government officials if they were building cities for people or for cars, had a long and complex relationship with the city of Vancouver.

Jacobs first made a name for herself in the early 60s while living in New York. She took a stand against prominent developer Robert Moses who was preparing to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have cut through Greenwich Village and SoHo, in effect severing them from the rest of the city. Moses viewed these areas as slums but Jacobs saw great potential in the now thriving neighbourhoods. She preached neighbourhood revitilization and through public talks, community engagement and a little civil disobedience, managed to get the highway project shelved.

Shortly after her widely-publicized battle with Moses, Jacobs immigrated to Canada so that her sons could escape the draft. She settled in Toronto but Vancouver quickly became a city she loved and praised.

Jacobs was consulted when highways were being built in and around Vancouver in the 60s and she is, at least in part, responsible for the fact that Vancouver has thriving downtown neighbourhoods unbisected by highways.

It didn’t come as a great surprise to me to learn that Jacobs, prior to her death in 2006, had opposed many of the BC Liberals’ urban planning initiatives. She was vocally opposed to the Gateway program, designed to facilitate traffic flow in and out of Vancouver for the 2010 Games.

Jacobs also denounced the construction of the RAV rapid transit line and a four-lane highway to be blasted through the Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver in order to upgrade the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler.

In fact, this was the campaign in which Jacobs was most invested at the time of her death at the age of 89.

In what her son Ned called her “last civic act,” Jacobs issued a statement of support to the people of West Vancouver and in particular, the protestors determined to, in Jacobs’ words, “preserve and protect the magnificent and irreplaceable Eagleridge Bluffs and Larson Creek Wetlands from this destructive, ill-conceived scheme.”

Current Vancouver Director of Planning Larry Beasley has referred to Jacobs as "a spiritual guide." The city of Vancouver recently launched a Jane Jacobs Ideas Day. I have big hopes that Jacobs' ideas for livable cities will continue to act 'spiritually' upon local planners and developers and that this highway madness will be recognized for the killer concrete it really is.


You can find a repository of Jacobs' writing online, courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces and Preservenet. More information about Jacobs' life and ideas can be found here.