Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs moved with her sister to Greenwich Village during the Depression and began a lifelong love affair with the neighborhood.  She attended the Columbia College of General Studies and supported herself as a freelance writer.  Eventually she landed at Architectural Forum as an associate editor.  She began to ask questions about the impact of wholesale urban renewal and slum clearance on the the street life in cities.  She felt that the residents were not considered in many of the planning decisions that were being made.  She began speaking about it and eventually landed a Rockefeller Foundation grant that funded the three years of research that became The Death and Life of Great American Cities.