What’s Next for Jane Jacobs' Sidewalk Ballet?

A place-based intervention that leads to the greater desirability of a place—such as the expansion of transit, the greening of small park spaces, or the creating of a business improvement district—could also foster new housing or condominium developments, which would then increase the population in an area. Yet if an area doesn’t have a school syst

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Nestled in the heart of a bustling city is Unity Avenue, a vibrant street teeming with life. It's early morning, and the sunlight washes unevenly over a diverse mixture of new and old buildings ↕, some graffiti-sprayed and worn out by the ravages of time.

It is fashionable to suppose that certain touchstones of the good life will create good neighborhoods—schools, parks, clean housing and the like. How easy life would be if this were so! How charming to control a complicated and ornery society by bestowing upon it rather simple physical goodies. In real life, cause and effect are not so simple. Thus

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Author and activist Jane Jacobs argued that cities thrive when they mingle “everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets.”