Table of Contents:
ix Foreword by Mary Rowe --
xi Introduction by Max Allen --
3 Ideas In which Jane Jacobs writes about her life, gives a speech about traffic, and is arrested for inciting a riot. Ten contributors examine her ideas, including ways to make cities livable, population growth, self employment, urban infill and the wealth of nations. '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities presented a fresh voice that we didn't know we needed until we heard it. '' --
35 Reporting 1937-58 Jane Jacobs' first magazine articles : flowers and diamonds in New York. Writing about the war effort for Iron Age. Describing how cities really work in ground breaking articles for Architectural Forum --
47 The Death and Life of Great American Cities The 1961 book that started a revolution in city planning. Reviewers (and city planning officials) are enthusiastic or furious. Praise and dismay, scorn and delight. Congress notices. Jane Jacobs resists a suggestion that the book should be re named --
67 New York The city decided to take the area where I live for urban renewal. The neighborhood rallied to fight. Jane Jacobs’ life in New York : saving Washington Square and the sidewalks, preserving integrated education, stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and fitting new places to live into a living city --
87 Europe : January 24 February 9, 1967 Letters home from a trip to Hanover, Frankfurt, Genoa, Paris, London, Edinburgh. And Venice : I spent yesterday walking the streets, and could hardly stop until 11 p.m. when the city had returned to the cats and the fog --
95 Opponents Versions of the ideal city. The ideas of Jane Jacobs versus others. Lewis Mumford’s vision of urban life as an immaculate utopia, and Robert Moses’ vision of thw city as a car friendly place of expressways, bridges and parks --
101 Economies The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984) analyze how societies thrive. One critic sees Misunderstandings, misinterpretation and a peculiar form of juxtapositional malapropism. Another calls Jane Jacobs probably the most readable economist at large in the world today --
115 Toronto No sooner has the Jacobs family moved to Toronto (a city which works) than an expressway is announced that will run right through their house. A movie is made with Marshall McLuhan. The expressway is stopped. Jane Jacobs talks about taxation, bicycles and the Megacity. She is given the Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime achievement --
133 Family Matters Letters to Jane Jacobs’ mother, who kept each one (and lived to 101). Growing tomatoes on the roof in Toronto, an adventure on Grand Canary Island, citizenship, a vetoed ragout of wild boar, lilacs, a fieldmouse in a Crisco can, building 30 bicycles and mosquitoes in Alaska --
153 Quebec Jane Jacobs’ book The Question of Separatism (1980) is called the clearest and most unbiased analysis I have ever read of a peculiar situation in a very unusual kind of country. Quebec economists pay close attention --
159 Values Traders and guardians. The moral codes of commerce and politics from Plato and Lao Tzu to the U.S. Constitution detailed in Systems of Survival (1992). Jane Jacobs says, Although its language is colloquial, it is my most serious book --
169 Democracy Working for the U.S. government, Jane Jacobs faces a Cold War interrogatory (‘’Are you now, or have you ever been’’) She is arrested at an anti draft demonstration, is invited to the White House, supports the Chicago Seven, protests the War Measures Act, and is asked by the Canadian military and the British police to give them advice --
185 Applause Raves, honors, and appreciations long and short, scholarly and anecdotal written especially for this volume --
213 Footnote --

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) is history's most celebrated urban critic. In addition to her classic, Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs authored another half dozen influential books on urban planning, economics, and design. She was also a tireless advocate of vibrant city neighborhoods. Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs offers students, enthusiasts, and critics unprecedented insights into the work of this seminal thinker. Originally published in 1997, and continually sought after ever since, this 2011 edition includes a new introduction by distinguished urban scholar Mary Rowe. The book is a unique combination of Jacobs' own writing (including previously unpublished speeches, letters, and articles), biography, and analysis by other scholars. Arranged by topic, it sheds light both on the development of Jacobs' theories and her life. A chapter on Death and Life of American Cities reveals a debate between the author and her publisher about changing the book's title. A section on Europe includes letters home from Frankfurt, Paris, London, Venice, and other cities that shaped her sensibilities. And a chapter titled 'Ideas' offers analysis from ten contributors who examine Jacobs' thoughts on issues from population growth to urban infill, self-employment to the wealth of nations. What results is a captivating scrapbook, offering a distinctive understanding of Jacobs' most important ideas --