The author and urbanist, who lived much of her life in Toronto and died in 2006 at age 89, has been hailed as the “greatest thinker of the 20th century” (L.A. Review of Books).
(...) “It’s pretty safe to say that Jane was a prophet and she was also on the right side of history,” said Toronto’s chief city planner, Jennifer Keesmaat. “But let’s not overromanticize this. Canada is a suburban nation primarily built around cars. … Her ideas are as critical and relevant today and need to be as much of a clarion call as they were back in the sixties.”
"Montreal cannot afford to behave like other Canadian regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well-being of the Quebecois. It must instead become a creative economic center in its own right."
"Yet there is probably no chance of this happening as long as Quebec remains a province of Canada. The Quebecois themselves seem unaware of the nature of the problem which looms in their future, and given the prevailing assumptions, they may not come to understand it. But they will understand this: things are not going well.”
“That is why the issue of sovereignty for Quebec, now that it has been raised anew as a possibility, is not going to evaporate. Inevitably, whether or not they could do better on their own, the Quebecois are going to think they could, and many of them are going to want to try. We may expect the question of separation to be raised again and again in coming years until it is finally settled either when Canada accedes to some form of sovereignty for Quebec or when the Quebecois accept the decline of Montreal and become resigned to it and to its repercussions.”