Would that it were so

A Visionary Remembered....

...her most radical early propositions have since become so pervasive and widely accepted...

I think folks are getting a bit carried away. Just go look at the sort of anti-urban stuff — Gehry, Koolhaas etc etc — still being lauded as works of genius. No, Jacobs has been widely-discussed and praised but her ideas, even the most basic, are only hesitantly being implemented. Her approach is more extolled than followed. If you want the most perfect example possible, just go look at the three blank facades (out of four) of Gehry's Disney Center in LA. Even such a simple rule as "eyes on the street" is invisible in the major part of a building which is supposed to be the generator of a new urban neighborhood.

Jacobs was not about air-fairy sort of things like "community" and "sustainability" and "diversity" — I mean, who can be against those words?  Yes, a Jacobean city would have those attributes. But Jacobs was about specific details of how to get there, what makes a good city. So something simple like the vivid "eyes on the street" is not supposed to be a goal or a discretionary amenity but an essential specific required building block, like a 2" x 4" is in house construction.

•••

Btw, the more I read the accolades for her impact, the more I feel it necessary to suggest that Jacobs' impact was enormous on thinking about cities but not all that great in actually building them, if you judge from the stuff still considered good architecture by not-missed critics like Muschamp.