<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.5.7638.1"> <TITLE>Jane Jacobs died Tuesday</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY>  <A HREF="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-jacobs26apr26,1,178553.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true">http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-jacobs26apr26,1,178553.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true</A> 'Jane Jacobs, an urban theorist and community activist whose books argued for the rehabilitation of neighborhoods on traditional lines, breaking with emerging trends in city development, died Tuesday. She was 89.' … 'She was internationally known as an advocate of cities with distinct neighborhoods, built to a human scale, mixing commercial and residential space. She was against building highways that cut through city centers and was once arrested at a public hearing after she stormed the podium to express her opposition to a plan for an expressway through lower Manhattan. "Jane Jacobs' thinking about cities was clear and it came from a person who lived in cities," Toronto Mayor David Miller told The Times on Tuesday. "She didn't just write about urban issues. She acted on her convictions." Jacobs' most influential work, 1961's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," set the stage for a battle that Jacobs waged for decades. Defying popular theories on how to renew city slums by plowing them under and replacing them with uniform housing projects, she pushed for recycled buildings and new structures scaled to the existing neighborhood.' </BODY> </HTML>