Jane Jacobs — RIP

Jane Jacobs passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89. Jacobs was one of the greatest independent scholars/intellectuals in the 20th century.

I first heard of Jacobs and her work through Sam Staley, when we were in graduate school together in the 1980s. Sam and Sanford Ikeda more recently edited a special volume of The Review of Austrian Economics on urban interventionism, which in a large part contrasts the appreciation of spontaneous order in the development of cities that one finds in Jacobs's work with the urban planning approach that dominates government policy toward cities.

I reviewed and loved Jacobs's System  of Survival.

Thank you Jane Jacobs for your intellectual integrity and wonderful insights.