Editing Jane Jacobs (section)

=== ''The Economy of Cities'' ===
The thesis of this 1979 book is that cities are the primary drivers of economic development. Her main argument is that explosive economic growth derives from urban [[import replacement]]. Import replacement is the process of producing goods locally that formerly were imported, e.g., Tokyo bicycle factories replacing Tokyo bicycle importers in the 1800s. Jacobs claims that import replacement builds up local infrastructure, skills, and production. Jacobs also claims that the increased production is subsequently exported to other cities, giving those other cities a new opportunity to engage in import replacement, thus producing a positive cycle of growth.

In an interview with Bill Steigerwald in ''[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]'', Jacobs said that if she is remembered for being a great intellectual she will be remembered not for her work concerning city planning, but for the discovery of [[import replacement]]. Critics erroneously claim that her ideas parrot the idea of [[import substitution industrialization|import substitution]] advanced earlier by scholars such as [[Andre Gunder Frank]]. Import substitution was a national economic theory implying that if a nation substituted its imports with national production, the nation would become wealthier, whereas Jacob's idea is entirely about cities and could be called urban import substitution. However, even this would lead to confusion since in practice, import substitution in India and Latin America were government subsidized and mandated, whereas Jacobs's concept of import replacement is a free market process of discovery and division of labor within a city.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://reason.com/archives/2001/06/01/city-views|title=City Views|work=Reason|last=Steigerwald|first=Bill|date=June 2001}}</ref>

In the second part of the book, Jacobs argues that cities preceded agriculture. She argues that in cities trade in wild animals and grains allowed for the initial division of labor necessary for the discovery of husbandry and agriculture; these discoveries then moved out of the city due to land competition. It is commonly taught that agriculture preceded cities. This notion was promoted originally by archaeologist [[Vere Gordon Childe]] and in recent times, by  [[Charles Keith Maisels]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Maisels|first=Charles Keith|date=1990|title=The Emergence of Civilisation: From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture, Cities, and the State in the Near East|publisher=Routledge|location=New York}}</ref>{{sfn|Soja|2000|p=24}} The apparent opposition between the traditional history and Jacobs' rests in differing definition of 'city', 'civilization', or 'urban'. Traditional history and archeology define 'urban' or 'civilization' as [[Synoecism]]{{snd}}as a literate, socially stratified, monolithic political community,{{sfn|Soja|2000|p=25}} whereas, as one can see from ''The Economy of Cities'' or from ''Cities and the Wealth of Nations'', Jacobs defined the city purely along the lines of geographically dense trade giving way to entrepreneurial discovery and subsequent improvements in the division of labor. Without the requirements of literacy, permanent and monumental building, or the signs of specialized civil and armed forces, 'cities' can be accurately interpreted as existing thousands of years before when Childe and Maisels place them.