Jane Jacobs, one of the most interesting thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, is dead. Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities changed the way people thought about cities and “planning.”
(Another great book on cities had a major impact on my own thinking on the growth of cities and of civil society: Medieval Cities, by Henri Pirenne.)
Henri Pirenne
Unfortunately, I don’t think many planners have really heeded Jacob’s thoughts on individual liberty, including many “New Urbanists”. Architects and planners seem to relish the chance of planning “tabula rasa” with little or no concern for property rights. One of the latest occurances is William McDonough’s sustainable cities going up in China:
http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/150325.html