Jane Jacobs, “Down-to-earth Cassandra”

“Jacobs’ long run as a complex, down-to-earth Cassandra: a woman who wore comfortable shoes while dishing out uncomfortable truths, who kept her ear to the ground while trying to topple giants. What Jacobs hated most — what she saw in Robert Moses, and what she always tried to avoid in her own public appearances after she gained a measure of fame — was what she called the “Olympian vantage point” of the planners who were trying in the postwar years to apply the spare, muscular forms of Modern architecture to the design of entire cities, hollowing out old neighborhoods and running giant overpasses along waterfront promenades.”