Berkeley Planning Journal

Believing it would only impede her own writing, urban theorist Jane Jacobs refused to assist her would-be biographers. As a result, journalist Alice Sparberg Alexiou's Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary, inspired by Jacobs's stands against powerful figures like Robert Moses and commitment to Greenwich Village, is forced to uncover Jacobs's life from her published works. Alexiou situates Jacobs's life in the context of planning and planning history and discusses Jacobs's role in constructing that history.