In Jane Jacobs’ honor: Connect, Engage, and Build a New Kind of Community Resilience, a guest post by Rebecca Pitts

I spent the last five years writing a Young Adult biography of Jane Jacobs, the activist, public intellectual, and urbanist. Jane Jacobs was born more than a hundred years ago, yet the ideas she popularized — about cities, about people, about creating a more equitable world — remain hugely relevant today. Jane’s legacy will be celebrated in just a few short weeks as people gather together on her birthday in cities around the world to learn about their place’s history and culture. In the spirit of Jane’s Walk, this annual international event, I’m thinking about community connection. I’m imagining a future where we can build a new kind of people power, together.
Jane committed her life to building cities made for, and by, the people who live in them. She organized to keep New York City’s Washington Square Park as a place for people, not cars. She led the effort to stop a developer from bulldozing fourteen blocks of the West Village. She worked with seven hundred community members to build over four hundred affordable apartments in her downtown New York neighborhood. That’s not all: Jane and her fellow organizers delivered the culminating, final blow against a dystopian superhighway called ‘Lomex’ that would have decimated the Lower Manhattan neighborhoods of Chinatown, Little Italy, and SoHo. She never backed down, even when it meant going up against the most powerful man in New York, Robert Moses.
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So what does this have to do with you?!

From The New York Public Library: LINK
(Public Domain)
Presumably you don’t have a Robert Moses-type ripping up your park or trying to build a highway over your apartment building. But I have a feeling there are real, palpable issues at your doorstep. Issues that affect more Americans than less. Does everyone in your community have access to quality food, affordable housing, safety from violence, sidewalks, trees, green space and infrastructure like high speed internet access? How much time do your parents spend commuting? (Or, how much of your day is in the car going to school, practices, and activities?) Can you bike or walk to places you’d like to go? How much of your public space is used for parking (cars)?
So here’s my challenge: I dare you to get outside, in your community. Connect with your neighbors. Make a project out of it — get some extra credit or community service hours in.
Ask yourself, a resident or neighbor, a local elected leader, and an activist to respond to these same questions that Jane wrote in 1961:
- How do we empower people to support one another?
- How do we make our public spaces safe and welcoming for all?
- How do we encourage the growth of neighborhoods that offer lots of reasons for being there?
- How do we do more of the things that are working well?
- How do we protect the homes of people—“whoever they may be, to stay put by choice”—in order to encourage diversity of all kinds?

(Public Domain)
What did you learn? What do you think about their responses? Can you put any of these ideas into action? Or join an effort underway?
We need to look up, reach out to others, connect, and solve problems, together.
Yes, I’m imagining a future where we can build a new kind of people power, together.
With great problems in our world from humanitarian disasters and wars, to our climate crisis and threats to democracy, what benefit is there to looking up from our day-to-day and to find new meaning from our neighbors down the street, right here, in our local communities?
Here’s the thing: this might very well be our only way through.
Meet the author

Rebecca Pitts writes for and makes things with young people. Her Young Adult biography JANE JACOBS: CHAMPION OF CITIES, CHAMPION OF PEOPLE (Seven Stories Press) was shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside CBC Youth Book Prize for Social Justice and earned a starred review from Booklist. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times for Kids, Teen Vogue, Highlights Magazine, and elsewhere.She runs workshops in the Lower Hudson Valley Rivertowns for young writers and artists, guiding children in visual storytelling in comics, zines, and newspaper-making.
Social Media
https://www.instagram.com/rebeccaapitts/
https://www.pinterest.com/rebeccapitts/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaapitts/
About Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People
The first biography of Jane Jacobs for young people, the visionary activist, urbanist, and thinker who transformed the way we inhabit and develop our cities.
Jane Jacobs was born more than a hundred years ago, yet the ideas she popularized—about cities, about people, about making a better world—remain hugely relevant today. Now, in Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People, we have the first biography for young people of the visionary activist, urbanist, and thinker.
Debut author Rebecca Pitts draws on archives and Jacobs’s own writings to paint a vivid picture of a headstrong and principled young girl who grew into one of the most important advocates of her time, and whose impact on the city of New York in particular can still be seen today. Jacobs went against the conventional wisdom of the time that said cities should be designed by so-called experts, “cleaned up,” and separated by use, arguing that such pie-in-the-sky visions paid very little attention to the wants and needs of people who actually live in cities. Jane instead championed diversity, community, “the life of the street,” and the power of grassroots movements to make cities better and more equitable for all. She never backed down, even when it meant going up against the most powerful man in New York, Robert Moses.
Here is a story of standing up for what you know is right, with real-world takeaways for young activists. Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People emphasizes how today’s teens can take inspiration from Jane’s own activism “playbook,” promoting change by focusing on local issues and community organizing.
ISBN-13: 9781644212998
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Publication date: 10/31/2023
Age Range: 12 – 17 Years
Filed under: Guest Post

About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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