Jane Jacobs’s 1961 masterpiece, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” put a stake in the heart of 1950s-style urban “renewal” and changed the way that citizens see their cities. What urban planners at the time viewed as “slums”—Boston’s North End, Jacobs’s own beloved West Village—she saw as vibrant, “mixed-use” urban neighborhoods. Her work during the 1950s to save Washington Square Park from Robert Moses (who wanted to run a sunken roadway through the middle) inspired generations of activists.

Jacobs argued that...