Jane Jacobs: Cyclist essay, written by Jacobs in the 1960s, foresaw the rise of car culture and its detrimental effects on urban environments. A critic of car dependency, Jacobs warned of the sociopathic tendencies it fosters. Despite this, she remained a dedicated cyclist, advocating for sustainable city planning. Her work, including the seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, emphasized the need for diverse, dense, and mixed-use urban spaces. Jacobs’s economic theories also recognized the bicycle’s role in innovation. Her legacy in urban activism and cycling advocacy continues to influence city planning and sustainable transportation.
In 1956, as car ownership and suburban development became American cultural ideals, urbanist Jane Jacobs noted the U.S. was becoming “an unprecedented nation of centaurs… Our automobile population is rising about as fast as our human population and promises to continue for another generation.” She added, “The car is not only a monstrous land-eater itself: it abets that other insatiable land-eater—endless, strung-out suburbanization.”
Foreseeing decades of suburban sprawl, Jacobs criticized car dependency and its impacts on land use. Her analogy of drivers as centaurs—half-men, half-vehicles—suggested cars made people less human in their interactions. “Road rage” exemplifies this car-induced pathology, but recent U.S. car culture has normalized new forms of sociopathy. Vehicles have become larger, and more aggressive in appearance and sound. Modifications such as “murdered out” styling, which blackens the vehicle to make it appear more menacing, and exhaust systems that disturb the peace, have grown popular. Such changes dehumanize drivers and threaten pedestrians and cyclists, sometimes even incorporating aggressive features like spikes resembling weapons.
This rise in vehicular aggression coincides with an increase in vehicular homicides and injuries directed at pedestrians, especially during public protests. The 2017 Charlottesville car attack, in which Heather Heyer was killed, is one such incident. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, over 100 instances of drivers ramming protesters were recorded. Legislative responses, like the 2021 bills in Oklahoma and Iowa granting immunity to drivers striking protesters, reflect a troubling normalization of vehicular violence.
Despite her discomfort in front of cameras, Jacobs enjoyed cycling. Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she continued bicycling into adulthood, unlike many Americans who abandoned it for cars. Jane and her husband Bob Jacobs were avid cyclists, often taking cycling holidays with their children. They cycled from their home in Manhattan, escaping the city’s summer heat for Cape Cod and Nantucket.
In the 1950s, while many embraced car culture, Jacobs cycled to work at Rockefeller Center and around Manhattan for her job at Architectural Forum. Cycling remained common in areas like Greenwich Village, where Jacobs lived. She used her bicycle for daily activities and activism, including promoting the West Village Houses, an affordable housing development she helped design.
Jacobs’ last book, Dark Age Ahead (2004), critiqued car dependency as harmful to a sustainable society. She noted that urban renewal projects had made cars essential for daily life, segregating stores and workplaces from residences.
Today, Jacobs’ work occasionally appears in cycling-related literature, though her influence on cycling cities is often underestimated. She famously fought against expressways in New York and Toronto, recognizing car dependency’s destructive impact on cities. Her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, detailed these ideas, including a chapter on reducing automobile dominance.
Jacobs’ early activism, such as joining campaigns to close Fifth Avenue to cars and save sidewalks from widening, also rejected car culture. Her ideas on urban design, emphasizing diversity, density, and mixed uses, are now fundamental in the field. These concepts, forming the basis for place-making, tactical urbanism, and bicycle urbanism, were not conceived from a car’s window but from her experiences on foot and bicycle.
In her economic writings, such as The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), Jacobs highlighted the importance of local production, using Japan’s postwar bicycle industry as an example of economic growth. She also discussed the bicycle’s role in fostering innovation and industrial development.
In her later years, Jacobs continued to advocate for cycling. In a 1985 essay, she emphasized the need for better cycling infrastructure and community activism. She urged cyclists to collaborate with other groups to improve urban life, recognizing that a city good for cycling is good for all activities.
Jane Jacobs, known for her influential urbanist ideas, saw the bicycle as a crucial tool for creating better cities. Her legacy continues to inspire urban design and cycling advocacy, emphasizing the human scale and community-centered planning.
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