The Jane Jacobs Medal Created by Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced the creation of a $200,000 award, called the Jane Jacobs Medal. It is meant to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban design.
Two people will receive the medal each year, one who is at the dawn of their career just starting out, and the other who has made a lifetime contribution. Both living individuals will be recognized for their contributions to New York City and for their ideas and activism that reflect the ideals of Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs was herself a young and unknown in 1958. It was then she received a $10,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to write what would become “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”
Published in three years later, the book, which described the intricate network of relationships in neighbourhoods, it continues to influence contemporary thinking about how cities work.
“Jane Jacobs’ way of seeing things has really held sway over the last 20 years,” the New Yorker architecture critic and New School professor, Paul Goldberger, who is on the jury for the medal, said. “And that’s all to the good.”
Complete details about the Jane Jacobs Medal is available on the Rockefeller Foundation award webpage.
