Jane Holtz Kay

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane Holtz Kay (* 7. July 1938 in Boston as Jane Holtz , † 4. November 2012 ibid) was an American urban planning - and architecture critic . In addition to her columnist work for, among others, The New York Times , The Boston Globe and The Nation , she gained notoriety through the 1997 book Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back .

Jane Holtz studied American history at Radcliffe College . She wrote her thesis on Lewis Mumford , who also played an important role in her further work. She initially worked as a reporter for the daily newspaper The Patriot Ledger . She later wrote columns for The Boston Globe (as did her younger sister Ellen Goodman ) and from 1973 for The Nation .

In her first monograph Lost Boston , published in 1980, Kay dealt with historic buildings in Boston that had been demolished for the construction of roads, parking lots and shopping centers. The preservation of the built cultural heritage was also the thematic focus of the second work Preserving New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine , which she had written together with Pauline Chase Harrell.

In 1991 Kay moved from the Boston suburb of Brookline to Back Bay , an inner city neighborhood, and sold her car. In the years that followed, she wrote Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back , published in 1997 and her most influential work. In it, she criticized the cultural dominance of the automobile in the United States and its effects on urban and spatial development.

Works

  • Jane Holtz Kay: Lost Boston . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1980, ISBN 0-395-27609-8 .
  • Jane Holtz Kay, Pauline Chase Harrell: Preserving New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine . Pantheon Books, New York 1986, ISBN 0-394-74395-4 .
  • Jane Holtz Kay: Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back . Crown Publishers, New York 1997, ISBN 0-517-58702-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bryan Marquard: Jane Holtz Kay, architecture critic and author. The Boston Globe , November 16, 2012, accessed November 28, 2014 .
  2. ^ A b c Preston L. Schiller: Remembering Jane Holtz Kay. The Nation , December 11, 2012, accessed November 28, 2014 .
  3. ↑ a b c Paul Vitello: Jane Holtz Kay, a Prophet of Climate Change, Dies at 74. The New York Times , November 20, 2012, accessed November 28, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Jane Holtz Kay: Without a Car in the World. MIT Technology Review , July 1, 1997, accessed November 29, 2014 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kay, Jane Holtz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Holtz, Jane (maiden name); Holtz Kay, Jane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American urban planning and architecture critic
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH 4th November 2012
Place of death Boston