CITY PLANNING CRITIC JANE JACOBS
AND LATE NOTED EDUCATOR REX E. LEE
TO BE HONORED IN U.VA. FOUNDER'S DAY COMMEMORATION

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., March 26 -- A visionary who changed
the way urban planners perceive cities and a distinguished lawyer
and educator will be honored as part of the commemoration of the
University of Virginia's Founder's Day next month.
	Urban theorist Jane Jacobs, award-winning author of "The
Death and Life of Great American Cities" and "Cities and the Wealth
of Nations," who describes cities as intricate working organisms,
will receive the 31st annual Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
Medal in Architecture. 
	Rex E. Lee, former U.S. Solicitor General and former
president of Brigham Young University, who died this month, will be
the recipient of a posthumously conferred 20th annual Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law.
	The awards recognize distinguished contributions in two
fields that were of deep interest to Jefferson and are the highest
outside honors conferred by U.Va., which awards no honorary degrees.
The Thomas Jefferson award ceremony will take place at a private
luncheon in the Rotunda on Friday, April 12th, the day preceding the
University Founder's 253rd birthday. The prizes are sponsored by the
University and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, which owns
and operates Monticello, Jefferson's home.
	Jacobs will discuss her work in a public presentation at
5:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 10, in Minor Hall Auditorium.  An
exhibit of her personal papers and other key Jacobs material will be
on display in Campbell Hall second floor, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. weekdays,
April 8-26.  U.Va. Architecture dean William A. McDonough said, "For
more than three decades Jane Jacobs has challenged urban designers,
planners and citizens alike to see cities clearly as truly vibrant
places. She has taught us that we neglect them at their peril."
	Law dean Robert E. Scott said that Lee, who stepped down as
president of Brigham Young University Dec. 31 because of ill health,
"exemplified through his long career in government, law and
education a commitment to public service that is not often seen in
our national life.  He was an educator in the truest sense and one
who will be sorely missed by countless persons whose lives he
touched."
	Jacobs, born in Scranton, Pa. and now a Canadian citizen
living in Toronto, is credited with changing the way North Americans
view the problems and needs of cities.  Her landmark 1961 book, "The
Death and Life of Great American Cities," brought a practical and
common sense approach to urban problems and cut through to the
essence of city-dwellers' everyday lives.  Her background as a
reporter and free-lance writer focusing on New York City's
neighborhoods and her position as associate and senior editor of
Architectural Forum led her to reinterpret and question basic urban
planning ideas of the time.  Hers was a fresh voice that described
how those who lived in the city were affected by projects and plans
which she regarded as mistakes by planners.  Her view focused on the
complexity, spontaneity and diversity that make up the fabric of
modern city life.  She challenged the idea of a designed urban
utopia and saw that close-knit neighborhoods were threatened by
planners' superhighways and high-rise housing projects.
	Writing of the economic life of urban communities in "Cities
and the Wealth of Nations" and "The Economy of Cities," Jacobs
champions the small entrepreneurs and shuns the interference of
corporate and governmental bureaucracies. She sees cities as crucial
to the economic health of the nation; they are the true source of
economic productivity and the creation of the nation's wealth.
	As a result of Jacobs's questioning of what makes for good
city life and what sort of ethics can promote urban prosperity, this
social prophet who attended Columbia University but holds no degree
led the way in what today is common practice in our ways of thinking
about the urban fabric.  Today Americans are trying to recreate
those neighborhoods she so adamantly fought to keep.
	Jacobs's many honors include the Sidney Hillman Foundation
Award in 1961 for "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"; the
Architecture Critics' Medal from the American Institute of
Architects, 1975; and in 1984 the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for
"Cities and the Wealth of Nations."  As a community activist she
served on New York Mayor John V. Lindsay's Task Force on Housing and
on President Lyndon B. Johnson's Task Force on Natural Beauty.
	Lee grew up in St. John's, Ariz., received his bachelor's
degree in 1960 from Brigham Young University and earned his juris
doctorate from the University of Chicago Law School in 1963,
graduating first in his class.  He held five honorary Doctor of Law
degrees.
	His distinguished law career began during the 1963 term of
the Supreme Court where he served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R.
White.  Under President Gerald R. Ford he served as assistant
attorney general in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice
and he was Solicitor General of the United States, the government's
top courtroom litigator, for four years during the Reagan
administration. His impressive legal career held the record for most
cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a term: six in 1986.
He argued a total of 59 cases in the Court. 
	Lee was the founding dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School
at Brigham Young University, a position he held from 1971-1981.  The
school consistently ranks in the top 25 percent of all law schools
in the U.S.  He held the George Sutherland Chair of Law at BYU where
he taught constitutional law.
	He wrote widely on constitutional and legal issues,
including the books, "A Lawyer Looks at the Constitution" and "A
Lawyer Looks at the Equal Rights Amendment."
	In 1989 Lee was named 10th President of Brigham Young
University, the nation's largest private university. During his
tenure he developed guidelines for an academic freedom policy upon
which he looked with pride.  His many accomplishments included
helping launch a $300 million capital campaign to be used for
faculty positions and scholarships and an ambitious building program.
	Past winners of the Jefferson architectural medal include
such leading figures as Mies van der Rohe, Lewis Mumford, I.M. Pei,
Ada Louise Huxtable, Philip Johnson, Vincent Scully, Robert Venturi,
Aldo Rossi, Fumihiko Maki, Frank O. Gehry, and Ian McHarg.
	The Jefferson award in law has been conferred on a wide
range of judges, legal scholars and public servants, including
Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and Sandra Day O'Connor,
Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, childrenŐs
advocate Marian Wright Edelman and former Sen. Edmund Muskie.
###
March 25, 1996
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