Writer
Following her most well-known work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, Jacobs wrote five more books on economic and social theory:
- 1969: The Economy of Cities
- 1985: Cities and the Wealth of Nations
- 1992: Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics
- 2000: The Nature of Economies
- 2004: Dark Age Ahead
Jacobs devoted several years to writing each of her books. The second, The Economy of Cities, took the longest—almost 8 years. Dark Age Ahead came the quickest, in about 3 years. Some have criticized it for being too hastily written.
Jacobs also branched out into other genres, authoring a children’s book, a biography of an aunt who was a schoolteacher in Alaska, and a treatise on Quebec separatism. When she died in 2006, she was still hoping to write a final book: A Brief Biography of the Human Race. It would feature an opening chapter on “The First Creative Age” and a closing one on “The Human Adventure.” “Writing is really my form of thinking,” Jacobs observed to her Random House publisher in a letter about the ambitious outline.
Boston College PULSE Program director Dick Keeley concluded his 1985 interview with Jacobs by asking her “a final hypothetical question: If someone came to you, say from Boston, and said, ‘You can have or create any post that you want in the government,’ would you accept the offer and, if you did, what would you do?’” Jacobs replied: “No, I wouldn’t because I don’t like that kind of work. I like writing books. I can’t do both.”
Upon finishing Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs wrote to her editor, David Ebershoff, with ideas for two more books: A Brief Biography of the Human Race and an anthology of her writings on how cities can expand their economies by replacing imported products with their own. She completed neither. Following book tours in 2004, her health declined and she died two years later of an apparent stroke.
Letter to David Eberhoff, with corrections, November 26, 2003
Box 42, folder 5, Jane Jacobs Papers, MS1995-029
Dark Age Ahead tour itinerary
Box 42, folder 2, Jane Jacobs Papers, MS1995-029
A tribute to the wide-ranging scope and influence of Jacobs’s ideas, the Rockefeller Foundation established the Jane Jacobs Medal in 2007 “to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban design, specifically in New York City.” Last year, the geographic qualifier was dropped and the competition opened to international nominations.