Jane Jacobs is one of those few people who seem to hold up well with audiences on opposite sides of the political spectrum. On the.... Jane Jacobs is one of those few people who seem to hold up well with audiences on opposite sides of the political spectrum. On the right, libertarians like her opposition to government planning and clearance. On the left she relates in her looking out for the people and places that make a city unique.

This quality is in part what allowed a somewhat diverse group of authors to contribute to the book What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs. The book is the joint work of the Center for the Living City and New Village Press.

Conytibutor Janine M. Benyus is a natural sciences writer. Hillary Brown is a practicing architect. Sanford Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College SUNY in New York. Ray Suarez is a Washington-based correspondent for PBS Newshour. You get the idea. The messages of Jane Jacobs have in someway resonated with each of the books contributors.

The results are apparent. Today we think of cities differently. We understand the importance of mixed-uses and pedestrian traffic. Few would argue these points. So what more can there be to say about Jane Jacobs?

A recent New Republic article compared Jacobs with her nemesis Robert Moses and explored whose ideas may have won in the end. I'd venture that while many of Jacobs ideas about the importance of street life have won out, it's hardly an urban development that happens organically. The importance of buildings of varying ages and condition is largely still lost on us. When planners and government entities are involved (and they hardly ever are not) too often cities today are still remade Robert Moses style, from the top down, and sometimes even with a meat axe.

With that in mind, the book is an important one because while the ideas of Jane Jacobs have appeal for many people, in the end they are largely discarded in the interest of practicality and control. But as Sanford Ikeda reminds us in What We See, the city has no purpose or end in itself. Great cities enable the better part of its inhabitants to be free to pursue their own diverse interests with the maximum likelihood of success.

As a nation, we are rediscovering cities. And so we must continue to rediscover and advance the observations of Jane Jacobs. The best cities and the best neighborhoods are the ones with the widest variety of interests and the most diverse stakeholders. Anytime we use top-down planning to remake a place, the diversity of interests decreases. The ideas of Jane Jacobs will have won out only when this is understood.

What we see can help us learn to look, and understand.