Shameless plug to check out, the National Constitution centers and constitutionalcenter. Org. Its a short one. We have elias from leading conservative scholar. You dont have to read a lot of cases. You can get the best arguments on both sides an trade the state constitutional state amendment and the gun rights around the world, download it at the app store or google play. You can buy the book, thats important to me and my wife and publisher. I have a friend here who he and his wife come here from italy and ten years ago he came to the Constitution Center and walked out and said, im going to apply for citizenship now. Great, thats wonderful. Thats an entorsment. I think hes here, rob, stand up. Hes an american zeb because of the Constitution Center. Thank you very much. [laughter] happy bill of rights, everyone. And merry christmas. And merry christmas. Tweet us twitter. Twitter [inaudible conversations] welcome to the synagogue. My name is roberta and im president for the center of living city, founder of the project to restore synagogue and new york in the that tow of robert mosses and jane jacobs. Started in the mid1980s evolved slowly and steadily in the same way that james jacobs taught us how neighborhood and whole cities rejuvenate over time to the efforts of many individuals. 20 years, 20,000 supporters, 20 million is approximately what it took to restore this landmark that was on the verge of loss. This has been the largest, independent Historic Restoration in the city not connected to a larger institution or a public body. Jane actually followed the project through the reports that i would bring her on my reports to toronto over many years and she loved the preservation effort now formerly a museum and functioning synagogue embraced chinatown navy neighbors, if you have been to egg roll, empanada day is one of the most original, fun fascinating party. Author of seven books about cities plus one about the constitution which she wrote while taking courses at colombia ai. Her most famous book, death and life of American Cities, changed the way world view cities and helped understand how the city is a fabric with all of its parts, streets, sidewalks, buildings, connected and interdependent. To celebrate the centenial the center organized lectures to revisit, explore and honor her ideas. To renew a discussion about her ideas. Two years before her death, the center for the living city was established with her enthusiastic approval by a small group of urbanist expressly to build on her legacy, we are now national and international with Board Members from boston, charlotte, new york, salt lake city, toronto, india and brazil. In the ten years since founding, we have sent a young architect as the James Jane Jacobs fellow, created a post katrina exhibit at the museum at the city of new york, help local people all over the world lead jane jacobs and observe their own communities, we published three books related to james work and have now established the lecture series. We have new innovative programming brewing. When you walked in tonight, you might have seen, but you have given a full schedule of the series, the lectures are all free but we depend on the generosity of supporters to help us build on janes legacy. You are inclined, please peck up envelope or see me afterwards and make a contribution no matter what size to the center for the living city. This series is what our executive director Steven Goldsmith calls the trick. This is not just a celebration of janes ideas. This is an invitation to all of you to use reflections to create responses to new problems, jane taught us how to observe, understand and value the urban life around us. Now we have a responsibility to put our own observations to fruitful use and here we are in this glorious 1887 landmark talking about jane jacobs who said old ideas sometimes use Old Buildings and new ideas must use new buildings. Both authors of new books about jane, for decades there have been so many myths about her and her ideas, often perpetrated by people who were threatened by both her and her ideas. She was, indeed, a force of nature and her ideas totally challenged the status quo of city planning and urban economics. Others misrepresented janes history and views to suit their own agenda. Over the years, a lot of untruths and half truths have persisted. Fortunately, both of these books in very different ways challenge tall myths and misrepresentations and each gives us little known details of both her personal and professional life before and after death and life. Robert is an author with a focus on biographies and science rating. His book the man who knew infinity was made into a recently successful movie. His eyes on the street delves into janes whole life. Has been a long time student of jane jacobs. He wrote doctoral thesis on her. Both books by both of the authors are available for sale. Both are fabulous, fascinating and extremely informative and mythbreaking. I will join with both of them after the lectures from questions from the audience, Robert Kanigel will go first, thank you. [applause] thank you, roberta. And thank you for this place. All right, i will talk right into it. Can anybody hear . Can everybody hear . This is an amazing place. To come in here and see an old thing made new in a way and made so beautiful is selfinspiring what vision and energy and money can do and its truly an honor to be in this space. I guess my grandfather arrived not too far from here 1895. Maybe he was here once, thats a thought. James jacobs is a story for the world and also a new york story. Some of her early critics complained that she was trying to impose her vision of new york on the rest of the world and maybe from a certain standpoint thats truth from the standpoint of americas suburban and rural heartland, theres something to that. Its hard to track james analysis of 20 and 30foot wide sidewalks, when most americans think of sidewalks are thinking of strip that two people can fit in. Or its hard also to square her funness for the old and for things old when american is so routinely turns to things that are new. James was born in scranton and lived the last 38 years in toronto and theres something new york about her and we as new yorkers in a sense claim a little bit of change just by being new yorkers. I grew up in brooklyn but not in one of the cool neighborhoods. A neighborhood called flat land and nobody would willing i will go there, i think. My dad had a shop of the second floor of a left building right next to navy yard. The timing of when i was in high school was from 1959 to 5962. Any of you who are familiar with janes story know thats almost exactly coin kiddent with the time when jane was writing the death and life of American Cities. Needless to say a teenager but i think during those years i was absorbing new york sensibilities, city sensibilities, jane jacobs sensibilities all the while and when the time came in 2010, when i was thinking about what my next book would be, i didnt call her jane then. Thats kind of presumptuous and learned in the book, everybody calls her jane, i had lived in cities all of my life. I lived in brooklyn and baltimore and san francisco, so even before i did my very earliest research into jane in 2010, long after peter had started doing his research on jane jacobs, i think i was halfway there to signing onto jane jacobs as my next writing project. I felt inside an affinity for this subject, for jane that i didnt have to explain to myself. It was selfevident. It was something in jane jacobs that felt i needed to do something with her and i think its this attachment or affinity that so many city dwellers, city dwellest from city lovers have from jane jacobs that i would like to about. I was one, roberta warned me that not many people will know about jane jacobs but some might not and i shouldnt ashove that we are all perfectly cognizant of jane jacobs. I will give a 90survey of her life. She was born in scranton one of four children, actually five, one of them died when he was young. Father was a doctor and mother had been a nurse. All of them were successful. The whole life was terrific, in school, you know, she said first and second grade teachers were terrific and downhill from there. [laughter] perfected her typing and she was proud of this. Dont mistake this. She was pleased with herself that she had this worker day skill. She always wanted to be a writer, though, her first writing job, she did freelancing for vogue magazine who wrote about certain sections of the city, later, she did take courses at colombia but never got a degree. During the war she worked as propagandist. After the war she continued in that realm, regime, she worked for the state department for a magazine called america. She wrote her articles about american cafeterias or american high schools and translated into russian and off to the solve soviet union. Soon after she went to work there, she had two seminole experiences that, i think, set the stage for writing, thinking about and writing death and life in American Cities, one was in philadelphia where ed bakon, the planning of pennsylvania took around and showed around what they had established accomplished in philadelphia and jane nodded and said, this is beautiful at the new sections that bakon was showing off to her. Where are the people . They are on the stoops, on the streets, they are carrying on and here in your neighborhoods there are no people. That was one of the first moments you jane found her questioning after post world period. The other important moment was when she got involved with a man bill kirk who was watching the big projects go up which ordinarily you say thats a good thing. Ratinfested were being knocked down and he was saying, and so she hung out with him for a while. He showed her around in east har harlam. In her description came away seeing a hidden order behind the seeming chaos of a confuseing urban neighborhood. She gave a talk at harvard in 1956 which put her in attention to the architectural. She battled robert moses and earlier, i think moses was not directly involved in trying to make, maybe he was, im not sure, trying to make her neighborhood an urban renewable area but she fought against that. That came earlier. And then she moved to canada because her children, the war is going on, the vietnam war and the choices were either they go to vietnam and they kill people, theyre killed or they go to jail or as it turned out, they move to canada and they move to canada and spend the rest of their lives in canada and the kids are now all the kids, her children are all canadian citizens leading canadian lives. She wrote six other books that are sometimes forgotten but are really interesting about economics, she wrote a book called systems of survival which is her what she described what she called moral syndromes where people have in different groups have different assumptions about how they want to run their lives in the marketplace or outside. For example, police and priests and military would be what she called guardians and she talked about how the world needs both of these and she came to this conclusion rather resistantly and didnt think that there ought to be a place for the guardians. Characterristically jane, her eyes opened the way the world really works and came to the conclusion that the world need both of these kinds of people. I think i have gone beyond my 90 seconds. Its worth saying something about this, i use the word reverence. Reverence is for other people that might admire, most influential urban thinker of all time. My stepdaughter gave me like a political button that has jane black and white and says wwjjd, what would jane jacobs do. This might seem like a really good thing for your subject to be called such a thing but its not really because first the list itself comes kind of weariness. I had a whole life, the jane file. In my book theres only a example of them to try to give a flavor. When you say long live the queen or equivalent of that, too many times its unthinking and uncritical and uninteresting and and seductive, i think. A nice review by belafonte. Tries to counter around jacobs cultural standing leaving us with the work of appreciation and adds that perhaps not weary enough. I love that. Praising but pulling back. Its easy to come under janes spell, so many people, i did. I try to bring balance to the story of jane jacobs, first by pointing out trying to look for what accounted the reverence. She was a woman in the mans world. She had no academic position, she had never graduated from college, she almost didnt graduate from high school. The years she did graduate, her mother asked, whats the highlight of your year, getting jane through high school, she said. [laughter] i think in the end what accounted for janes hold on so many people basically comes down to her ideas and her words. Tomorrow beginning to talk to another kind of a group where i will be talking about professional problems of doing biography and bringing up some questions and wasnt of them is what is a biographer to do when the first of janes books, the life and death of American Cities has had such a continuing, monumental longstanding influence when the others, well often praised and some of them winning awards do not. Do you give the books, do you give all the books equal play . Do you ignore them . Its a question. The short answer is, i think, it would be willful and silly to treat all her books equally, the fact is the death and life of great American Cities and its ideas so profounded effect on people. The book is filled with ideas, one after the other about the way cities work, about housing density and about how to come people still you think of densities, you think of overcrowded slums and jane analyzed successful sitting neighborhoods and found of them were most of the most, quote, crowd, highest density and whereas some slums were actually and talked about short blocks, more interesting and more reward to go take a walk where you get to a lively new street corner, new corner sooner rather than later. She goes on and on like analyzing the features of the city keeping her eyes open, look really, really hard, harder than any of us can at what and how cities worked. To learn more, i recommend that you go back to death and life. Jane can occasionally be hard slogging and chances are youll be the fiduciary one aha moment after another. Its difficult to say and i think its true, that you learn more about jane stay in jacobs. Listen to his music and you will get into touch with bob dylan in the way that no biography could. The same applies here. But for many readers, jane was almost like a conversion experience and some in this audience today didnt need to be born again and jane herself recognized this group. Those who already knew what she was trying to do who had appreciated cities, lived in cities, enjoyed cities but maybe a ritle out of place because all their friend were off to the suburbs and talking about how great that was. They were recognized and collaborated with foot people by giving legitimacy to what they already knew for themselves and i sometimes thought, i often thought actually that this notion of the legitimacy of vital diverse, vibrant, pedestrian city life is the most important legacy of death and life of great American Cities. I think i will stop there and turn the mic over. Thank you very much. [applause] first, thanks roberta and thanks to all of you for joining us here tonight. Im here with lawrence and absolutely delighted at the end of what has been a remarkable day, earlier today i had the chance to speak to a group of architecture students at cooper union about jane jacobs in one of my scholar heros. It was an amazing opportunity in part because my grandfather studied architecture about a hundred years ago and he almost certainly visited this building, all of which makes this a very extra special day and evening for me. In my brief talk this evening, i would like to reflect on jane jacobs legacy in part by asking, how do we understand her now. Both after the passage of time and now that we have some new books about her, is there a new jane jacobs now and is there a jane jacobs yet to be discovered and to be learned from in new ways. Im actually certain that there is. To explain why, i would like to share with you some of my discoveries about her life and work and some of my intentions in writing becoming jane jacobs, discoveries and intentions which, i believe, offer new understanding not just of her life and work but her experiences and ideas and most importantly, i think, the development of those ideas. Ive been a student of jane jacobs for the better part of 20 years. I first encountered her in the mid90s as architecture student at Harvard Graduate School of design. The place where she had made a historic speech 40 years earlier. When i was there, there was no recollection of that event. In fact, the moment i decide today study her thinking influence, the death and life of great American Cities in particular was when i realized she hasnt mentioned and the great transition from modernism to post modernism. This evolved into my graduate thesis, the first of three drafts or versions of my book. At the time, my particular obsession was with jacobs place in a check chuirl and urban history, in those years the post war, post modern period seemed to have been launched in 1999 1996 with a treaty, specially concerned with cities and urbanism. In reading it i became very interested in how conceptual of complexity corresponded with jacobs understanding of it and even shocked me in reading them side by side. First, although i discovered that jacobs had immediately made impact on architecture culture in 1960s and even at harvard despite having criticized the school by name, contemporary scholarship at the time barely considered impact because so little was known about the sources and development of her ideas. Second, in a much bigger context as first discussed in my thesis and lathe in a 2006 publication, jacobs pioneering publication of the science of complexity to cities and urbanism was largely missing not only from histories of cities but from histories of science. Jacobs was one of the first people to take Complexity Science out of the sciences. It is a contribution that merits further consideration more than 50 years later specially in our Digital World where we increasingly hear talk of technological driven small cities, jacobs invited me to her home in 1999. We spoke quite a bit of architecture and cities and relatively new and provocative urban design approach called the new urbanism. We didnt talk much about the past or her past, you see jacobs never wanted a bio