Toronto Star

If the response to Jane Jacobs' death last week proved anything, it was that we have yet to learn the lessons she was trying to teach. However well intentioned the reaction, most of it missed her essential point: that we must look for ourselves and come up with our own solutions. Instead, we regard Jacobs and her seminal work, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities much as Christian fundamentalists view the Bible, as the literal truth. Both ideas are nonsense, of course, and, even worse, highly destructive and contrary to the spirit of the original. Fifty years ago, when Jacobs embarked on her book, the world was a different place. Their problems aren't ours and neither are the solutions. In the 21st century, the issues we face are those of untrammelled sprawl, abject car-dependence and environmental degradation.