Jane Jacobs: Economist
Those who know of Jane Jacobs, and even those who know her work well (as few economists do), tend to think of her almost exclusively in terms of her trenchant writings and fierce activism against heavy-handed urban planning and top-down urban design; or they focus on her discussions of environmentalism (despite her biting criticisms of environmentalists), the preservation of entire neighborhoods (despite little written evidence of her support for the widespread practice of this), or locavorism (in spite of this being against the principal line of her thought about economic development and global trade). Most are unaware that she thought of herself foremost as an economic theorist.
About the speaker
Sanford “Sandy” Ikeda is a professor of economics at Purchase College of the State University of New York, and a research associate at New York University. He is on the Board of Directors of The Economic Freedom Institute, Cosmos and Taxis, and The Center for the Living City. He has lectured globally and has published in Forbes and National Review Online. His scholarly publications have appeared in The Southern Economic Journal, The Review of Austrian Economics, Environmental Politics, The American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Cosmos and Taxis, The Independent Review, and Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines. He has contributed entries for The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (on Robert Moses) and for The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (on Jane Jacobs, rent seeking, and interventionism). Ikeda’s current research focuses on the interconnections among cities, social cooperation, and entrepreneurial development; and he is currently writing a book on the economics and social theory of Jane Jacobs.