Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation 2009 Rockefeller Foundation Jane Jacobs Medal Awards Ceremony
41 Cooper Square, The Cooper Union, New York City
For Jacobs, publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities marked the beginning of an extraordinary career, committed to causes of social justice and civic activism and devoted to realizing the principle that communities affected by public policy ought to have a voice in its creation.
For the Rockefeller Foundation, the collaboration with Jacobs began fifty years of thinking about and working on urban issues. This half century’s experience informs our perspective on today’s urban challenges: housing and infrastructure, energy and education, the environment and economy. And these challenges only intensify as interconnected and accelerating forces of globalization and urbanization fuel a worldwide demographic revolution – driving the majority of people into cities and metropolitan regions for the first time in history, unleashing new risks and opportunities.