On Saturday, March 29, 2025, Boston College will host the conference “Jane Jacobs and Climate Readiness in Boston” on campus to focus on the work of Jane Jacobs, who is most well known for her monumental book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, though she also wrote 9 others books of impressive ambition. She is also known for her activism, especially in stopping plans for expressways that would have gone through the center of Washington Square and that would have cut across southern Manhattan. The conference considers what Jacobs’s work offers to the City of Boston as it plans to accommodate the ongoing challenges posed by climate change. The conference will be comprised of panels on urban planning, urban forestry initiatives, and community-based learning. The reason the conference is being hosted at BC is because the Burns Library houses the Jane Jacobs Papers as well as several related collectionsLinks to an external site., which makes us a magnet for any scholar interested in Jacobs’s work.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register to attend.