The engines fueling Jane Jacobs' legacy are at full throttle, with the Municipal Art Society's new exhibition, titled "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York." The show, opening this week at the Urban Center Galleries, delves into how today's (and tomorrow's) city fits into Jacobs' ideas and also examines how the public can draw on her values, given the major developments and rezoning now in progress. In case you've been sleeping for the past......

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn’t new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as......

The Rockefeller Foundation, which played a role in funding Jane Jacobs's pioneering research and writing 50 years ago, will now support her legacy by issuing two annual award grants in her honor. According to the NY Sun, one recipient will have made a lifetime contribution to urban design or theory, specifically in New York City, and the other will be on the cusp of a promising career. Each award is worth $200,000. The prize appears......

Development along the Hudson isn't letting up anytime soon. Now that Hudson River Park construction is well underway (and completed in some parts), proposals are being floated for refurbishing the hulking 14-acre Pier 40 terminal. The Villager has a thorough, if skewed, examination of the dualing Pier 40 visions. One, a joint venture of The Related Companies, Cirque du Soleil and the Tribeca Film Festival, calls for a Lincoln Center-style performing arts center. The......

Galas make us kind of nervous, but we attended this week's Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation dinner at Balthazar honoring the work and life of Jane Jacobs to hear what more could be said about the revered author and activist. New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger called Jacobs "the great prophet of the Village" and praised her legacy of radical intervention. "What she believed," he said, "is that every place has an essence,......

-- No bail for the Mafia cops-- even though they were acquitted on the previous charges, they're still being tried on some meth deals in Vegas. -- Streetsblog has a good post on the deadly and disastrous Houston Street renovation-- how many turning lanes do NYC drivers really need, anyhow? -- Speaking of gigantic urban renewal projects, have you ever wondered what Jane Jacobs would have thought about the Atlantic Yards? [Via Kottke] --......

Plans are in the works to name all or part of Bleecker Playground after the steely activist and mother of three who helped lay the groundwork for New Urbanism. Earlier this week, Community Board 2 discussed the tribute to Jane Jacobs, who died last April at 89. It's unclear whether the naming will cover the playground, the sitting area and the pathway from Hudson to Bleecker, or just the sitting area and pathway. Some......

Last night, there was a knit-in to honor Jane Jacobs' spirit. Per massive knit nyc, the event was to knit together a structure in the park and to remember "Jane Jacobs, who was crucial in preventing an expressway from being built through Washington Square Park." Boss Tweed sent us this photograph of knitters starting - did anyone participate or see the structure at the end? And here's a site on more recent park issues:......

Today's NY Times article about the current shaping of Hudson River Park and how it was inspired by the failed Westway project. Westway would have meant a landfill extension into the Hudson along the West Side Highway much like Battery Park City (and with its mix of residential and commercial space) - and the highway would have been built underground, as the highway was crumbling. New York Voices has a good site explaining it,......

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for......

Jane Jacobs' death will be talked about for a while, because issues she questioned continue to be relevant today, and we expect many articles about her and influence to come. But, for now, here are a couple links on Jane Jacobs - and let us know about more: - The NY Times obituary has an extensive look at her life - The AP obituary has a quote from her editor, Jason Epstein ("She inspired a......

Jane Jacobs, the urban activist whose influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities reshaped thinking about urban communities, died overnight in Toronto. Jacobs, who lived in Canada since 1968, faced down NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, arguably the most powerful man in the city at the time, in the 1960s, most famously stopping an expressway from being constructed downtown. Wikipedia on Jacobs. A 2004 Talk of the Town New Yorker piece about......

Jonny Diamond, The L Magazine...