Jane’s addiction

“Look what we have built,” wrote Jane Jacobs (1916–2006) in her seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. “Low-income projects that become centers of delinquency…middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation…luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with vapid vulgarity…commercial centers that are lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain store shopping….”

If it sounds like she’s describing the New York of today, it’s proof of how prescient the urbanist author was in 1961. “Jane Jacobs was very good at helping people understand the strengths and highlights of living in a city,” historian Chris Klemek says. He’s the curator of “Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York,” an upcoming project planned by the Municipal Art Society (MAS). The initiative was organized in the wake of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 proposal (you know, the one with the congestion tax), and uses Jacobs’s work as a springboard for analyzing future developments and their impact on the metropolis.

The exercise in civic thinking includes a Jacobs retrospective, on view beginning Tuesday 25 at the Urban Center Galleries (457 Madison Ave at 51st St, 212-935-3960), and a series of panel discussions beginning with the provocatively titled “Is New York Losing Its Soul?” on October 3.

Though Jacobs is often characterized by her willingness to take on the city and shut down large projects—she famously fought Robert Moses—Klemek stresses that she “was not antidevelopment,” and MAS organizers say they’re looking to foster optimistic dialogue about what’s possible in New York rather than just an anti-Ratner bitch session.

“Our aim is not to set up an [urban planning] template that everyone has to ingest because Jane Jacobs said so,” Klemek says. “We want to use her ideas to help illuminate urban life and empower people to be critical viewers of their city.”

For more information, go to mas.org.