Jane Jacobs is the author of the revolutionary book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Death and Life was her attempt to come to grips with cities and how they work. She championed the messiness of mixed use planning over the sterility of the single purpose approach. She preferred the diversity of downtown where people live and play to the suburban isolation of subdivisions, malls and industrial parks.

Her latest book, The Nature of Economies (Random House) champions a similar versatility in the marketplace.