Jeff Gray and Hayley Mick writing in “the Globe & Mail”:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060426.JACOBS26/TPStory/?query=jeff+gray :

bq. Former Toronto mayor David Crombie, an ally of Ms. Jacobs in [the Spadina Expressway] fight and others, said not even he was spared from her activism. Once, Ms. Jacobs brought a demonstrating crowd *in favour of* (emphasis added) an infill housing development right to Mr. Crombie’s front door at 11 p.m., rousing the mayor from his bed…

bq. Robert Lucas, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago and long an admirer of Ms. Jacobs’s work, praised her yesterday in an interview as a “natural-born social scientist, for sure.” […] Harvard University economics professor Edward Glaeser, co-author of a paper in 1992 that tested and supported Ms. Jacobs’s theories about how the industrial diversity in cities drives economic growth, called her the greatest urbanist of the past century. “There is no more creative innovative scholar that has been thinking about cities. . . . She is in a class by herself.”

bq. [Larry Beasley, city planner for Vancouver] and others from the planning department took Ms. Jacobs on a tour, pointing out what they felt were the most important elements of the city. But it was a small playground filled with children in the city’s core that caught her eye. She made them stop the car so she could leap out and have her photo taken in front of it. “She said, ‘This is the city of the future,’ ” he recalled. “And we were thrilled.”

Warren Gerard in the “Toronto Star”:http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1146001826801 gives more thoughts from Crombie:

bq. “The most important thing she did for me and us was remind us that ideas matter, and the ideas that were most important are the ones that mattered to us,” Crombie said. “She also believed you take action. You don’t have ideas and go away. There is a direct connection of thought and action.”

Incidentally, 4 May marks both what would have been Jacobs’ 90th birthday and the 10th anniversary of the Charter of the New Urbanism.

Excuses for the absence, but as always, check the photostream for some evidence of what I’m up to — in this case, enjoying the spring and visiting Texas for APA.