Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs moved to Toronto from New York City in 1968, arriving with her family partly to keep her draft-age sons out of the Vietnam War, and already internationally known as the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) and as the activist who had helped defeat Robert Moses's plan to run an expressway through Greenwich Village. She settled in the Annex and almost immediately found a nearly identical fight waiting for her in her new city.

Stopping the Spadina Expressway

Toronto planners had a long-standing proposal to extend the Spadina Expressway south through the Annex and downtown's west side, a project that would have demolished substantial residential neighbourhood housing to move commuter car traffic into the core. Jacobs joined and helped energize the existing community opposition, applying lessons from her New York fight, and the project was formally cancelled by the Ontario government in 1971, a decision widely credited with preserving the character of several central Toronto neighbourhoods that would otherwise have been cleared. Jacobs remained a prominent voice in Toronto civic life until her death in 2006, and Jane's Walk, an annual series of citizen-led neighbourhood walking tours held in cities worldwide, was founded in her honour the following year.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Jane Jacobs
• Wikipedia — Jane Jacobs

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