The doyenne of urban activism, Jane Jacobs, urged professional urban planners to understand that a city is more than its economy and its structures, that it is made by the everyday lives and interactions of people. Through her writings and on-ground protest work, for years together in New York and Toronto, she nudged people to not get carried away by the gleaming modern narratives of urban development which render people and places invisible. Despite criticism, Jacobs continues to be read, around the world, by people interested or curious about cities. Her vision and ideas – sense of place, micro-level interactions, street as a theatre of everyday ballet, the importance of neighbourhoods, and the resistance to top-down large-projects city building — still hold relevance.