In Passing

Toronto

Jane Jacobs, urban theorist

Jane Jacobs, an urban theorist and community activist whose books argued for the rehabilitation of neighborhoods on traditional lines, breaking with emerging trends in city development, died Tuesday. She was 89.

An American-born citizen of Canada, Jacobs died at a hospital in Toronto of natural causes. She had been in failing health for several years.

She was internationally known as an advocate of cities with distinct neighborhoods, built to a human scale, mixing commercial and residential space. She was against building highways that cut through city centers and was once arrested at a public hearing after she stormed the podium to show her opposition to a plan for an expressway through lower Manhattan.

Jacobs’ most influential work, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” published in 1961, set the stage for a battle that Jacobs waged for decades. Defying popular theories on how to renew city slums by plowing them under and replacing them with uniform housing projects, she pushed for recycled buildings and new structures scaled to existing neighborhoods.

Atlanta

Philip Walden, record executive

Philip Walden, whose Macon, Ga.-based Capricorn Records launched the Allman Brothers Band and became known as “the citadel of Southern rock” in the 1970s, has died. He was 66.

Walden died of cancer Sunday at his home in Atlanta.

In a career that began when he started managing Otis Redding and booking shows for other R&B artists in the late ‘50s, Walden launched Capricorn Records in 1969.

Capricorn earned a reputation as the South’s most successful independent record label in the 1970s, with successful acts such as the Allman Brothers Band and the Marshall Tucker Band. The label’s roster also included Wet Willie, Elvin Bishop and the Dixie Dregs.

Walden’s life and career were a roller-coaster. His music empire collapsed in the late ‘70s, but he overcame problems with cocaine and alcohol in the ‘80s and finally re-entered the record business with a revived Capricorn Records in the early ‘90s.

Concord, Mass.

Julia Thorne, Kerry’s ex-wife

Julia Thorne, the former wife of Sen. John Kerry who turned her experience with depression into a best-selling book, has died of cancer. She was 61.

Thorne died Thursday at a friend’s home in Concord, the senator’s office said.

Thorne, who struggled with depression for much of the 1980s, also founded a nonprofit education foundation called The Depression Initiative.

In 1993, she wrote “You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Depression,” with Larry Rothstein. A second book, “A Change of Heart: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Divorce,” was published in 1996.

Thorne and Kerry divorced in 1988 but remained friendly, and she supported his 2004 presidential bid.

She married Richard J. Charlesworth in 1997 and they moved to Bozeman, Mont. She was being treated for transitional-cell carcinoma in the Boston area.