Economics Detective Radio

This episode of Economics Detective Radio features Pierre Desrochers discussing the life and work of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs, born Jane Butzner, was a thinker and activist who wrote about cities. She spent her early career as a business journalist. When she started writing about urban renewal, she recognized the policy for the disaster it was. Jacobs became a voice for the general dissatisfaction with a policy that would bulldoze whole neighbourhoods, relocating the inhabitants into new buildings preferred by urban planning reformers and political elites. The editors of Fortune Magazine invited Jacobs to write a piece about downtowns. Her piece, “Downtowns are for People” became the magazine’s most-discussed article. She developed the ideas in that article into her first and most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book launched her as a minor celebrity. In New York City, she successfully opposed initiatives to “renew” Greenwich Village. She also opposed a plan that would have cut a hig