Interview With
Jane Jacobs

From CBC TV's "The Way It Is" program, circa 1969, urbanist and author Jane Jacobs comments on late 1960s Toronto and Montreal on how they have been planned and built while condemning significant highways planned for GTO.

"[T]he New Urbanists want to have lively centers in the places that they develop, where people run into each other doing errands and that sort of thing. And yet, from what I've seen of their plans and the places they have built, they seem to need a sense of the anatomy of these hearts, these centers."

From Ric Burns' masterful PBS documentary about New York City comes this inspiring David and Goliath story about the battle for human-scale neighborhoods. If only we'd had a Charleston version of Jane Jacobs in the '60s.

Produced by the Active Living Network, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project. An interview with legendary author Jane Jacobs, who wrote "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." The film explores the role of the built environment in physical activity and public health. 9:45 Total Length

Jane Jacobs: Parting Words captures urban thinker, writer, and activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) in her final public appearance in Portland, Oregon. On tour to promote her book, DARK AGE AHEAD (2004), Jacobs discusses the imperative for culturally diverse and innovative cities, among numerous other issues.

"[T]he New Urbanists want to have lively centers in the places that they develop, where people run into each other doing errands and that sort of thing. And yet, from what I've seen of their plans and the places they have built, they seem to need a sense of the anatomy of these hearts, these centers."

Jane Jacobs