Jane Jacobs died yesterday.

She was a giant in urban planning circles, and you may be wondering how she relates to biking in Toronto. Essentially, she was the first person who seriously challenged the planning "establishment" back in the 1960s with her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (which I can't recommend highly enough) which argued for people-based, rather than theory-based urban planning... .noting that many urban planners at the time planned according to how they thought people should act, rather than how they actually behaved.

She is credited with taking on Robert Moses in New York and stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have destroyed Greenwich Village and Chinatown. She then moved to Toronto and helped stop the Spadina Expressway, effectively stopping the plan to cover Toronto in highways.

She made Toronto livable and made our "city of neighbourhoods" possible.

Jane Jacobs Links:
Wikipedia Entry | Toronto Star Article | TreeHugger Post | CBC.ca article

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