Visionaries are invited to compete for Rockefeller's Jane Jacobs Medal.

The creation of a Jane Jacobs Medal to honor the activist, author and urbanist has been announced by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Awarded annually by the Rockefeller Foundation, Jane Jacobs Medals will recognize two living individuals whose creative vision for the urban environment has significantly contributed to the vibrancy and variety of New York City.

The 2007 Jane Jacobs Medal will be accompanied by prizes totaling $200,000. The selection of the winners and allocation of the prize money will ultimately be decided by the members of a Medal Selection Jury (see complete list below), which is co-chaired by George Campbell Jr., president of the Cooper Union, and arts patron and philanthropist Agnes Gund, and includes Rockefeller Foundation trustee David Rockefeller, Jr.. One award will recognize leadership and lifetime contribution; the other will recognize new ideas and activism that reflect the ideals of Jane Jacobs. The two Jane Jacobs medalists will together represent the creativity, innovation and dynamism of New York City. The 2007 Jane Jacobs Medal will be administered by the Municipal Art Society (MAS).

The Rockefeller Foundation launched an Urban Design Studies program in the 1950s that helped foster the emergence of the new discipline--urban design and theory. As part of this initiative, one of the Foundation's grants was to a thenobscure writer from Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs, for the research and writing of a book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Almost 50 years later, the book is considered an urban classic. Jane Jacobs died in April 2006 at of 89.

Nominations for the Jane Jacobs Medal can be submitted electronically via on http://www.rockfound.org/efforts/jacobs/janejacobs.shtml until 5 p.m. on March 2, 2007. The recipients of the medals will be announced in June. An award ceremony will take place in September, in conjunction with a new exhibit on Jacobs that will open at the Municipal Art Society.