Jane Jacobs' "big R&D lab" in downtown Toronto industrial sites redevelopment

20 years ago Jane Jacobs was given the chance to put her ideas into practice in the renewal of two large downtown Toronto in-decline industrial sites. The King Street neighbourhoods were a priority of then-mayor Barbara Hall and she asked Jacobs’ advice. Details of this fascinating story are told in the links below by Spacing Magazine’s Shawn Micallef in Curbed.com and in a Globe and Mail piece by Stephen Wickens.

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401 Richmond in the western neighbourhood of the "Two Kings", which the Zeidler family purchased in 1994, is an illustration of Jacobs’s arguments about urbanism and a piece of her legacy in Toronto. Eberhard Zeidler, the patriarch, was the architect who designed the Eaton Centre. When the Zeidlers purchased 401, the old steampunk neighborhood around it, once the heart of Toronto’s schmatte trade, was dead. "There was one restaurant in the area, just a greasy spoon. Now there has to be like 20 or 30 in that section there," says Margie Zeidler, Eberhard’s daughter and the driving force behind what would become the vital building beloved by so much of Toronto today. Today that 1994 landscape is unimaginable and the building is at the heart of one of the most intense areas of development in North America, with condo towers sprouting where there were once acres of parking lots and buildings left fallow after deindustrialization. Read more: Jane Up North - Curbed

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She wasn’t at all surprised to see people saying 

what would Jane Jacobs have thought; 

but what Jane Jacobs would have thought 

was think for yourself. — Jim Jacobs

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Richard Florida in CityLab — Inner-City Growth and Competition

Two new studies explore the movement of businesses and people back to the city, but outside the central business district. Over the past decade or so, inner cities have staged a comeback, leading to what’s been dubbed a “great inversion” as people and jobs move back to and near downtown, and poverty and disadvantage increasingly take up residence in the suburbs. Read more: Inner-City Growth and Competition in the U.S. - CityLab

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From Guardian Cities — Barcelona’s plan to give streets back to residents

From Urbanarium — City Debate #5: Let Experts Plan

Should citizens be more empowered to decide what gets built and where in Vancouver? Or is the process already too prone to public pressures, stifling the creativity, knowhow and vision that professional planners are hired to provide? More at: City Debate #5: Let Experts Plan | Urbanarium #urbanariumvote Tweets

The Burning Would: A film by Marshall McLuhan and Jane Jacobs

There was a shape to it. It had music. It did have a thread and raised a lot of important issues. Colin Vaughan provided an excellent narration. It was a good movie; furthermore, it was shown a lot, especially in the United States. For a long time I would get an occasional letter from this or that group in California saying that they had shown the movie. However, the final product bore no relationship at all to our original script.
— Jane Jacobs on "Making a Movie with Marshall McLuhan"

From The Municipal Art Society of New York The Jane Jacobs at 100 Celebration

The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) is a leading independent advocacy organization that inspires, educates, and empowers New Yorkers to engage in the betterment of their city. This year, MAS welcomes you to join Celebrating the City: Jane Jacobs at 100, a celebration dedicated to legendary urban activist Jane Jacobs on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Jane Jacobs believed in empowering urban citizens to get involved in their communities and shape their city. [A great synopsis, called Jane Jacobs: Ten Big Ideas by Nate Storing, formerly of the Jane’s Walk Project Office and now at Project for Public Spaces, is here.] The celebration, spanning May through October 2016, will honor her impact by bringing together hundreds of self-organized events and activities under a single banner that reveal the dynamic energy, innovation and creativity of cities. Read more: About the Jane Jacobs at 100 Celebration