It is difficult to write about the centennial of Jane Jacobs. For one thing, her influence on urbanism is unsurpassed and difficult to understate; for another, everyone has been writing something and so there’s a lot of overlap between pieces.
And yet, for all the encomiums and praise and think pieces in City Lab, Vox, Toronto’s Globe and Mail and even The New York Daily News, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that for all her intellectual influence, very little has changed about the American city and what has changed has been mostly cosmetic.
In the Boston area, for example, outdated zoning and building codes have created a process so complex that only professionals can navigate it and so long that only luxury buildings are profitable. The codes result in structures that encourage driving with parking minimums, setbacks that turn already wide streets into drag strips and…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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