Jane Jacobs famously wrote in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” that the “ballet of a good city sidewalk never repeats itself...is always replete with new improvisations.” Virginia Small is a writer and activist who works in the tradition of Jacobs. She looks at Milwaukee as a sort of dance critic of that always unfolding, urban choreography. She is a close and insightful observer of the prosaic and the grand, the human and the architectural. She believes, as Jacobs did, that city building is an intimate affair, about knowing neighborhoods and humans first and foremost. Virginia has expertise in urban landscape design, and is passionate about sustainability, equitable access to our county parks and preservation of Milwaukee’s public spaces. She attended Pius XI High School, where she took her first journalism class, and moved back to Milwaukee a number of years ago after spending many years on the East Coast and in Florida, working for newspapers and a national magazine. She’s written about a variety of controversial subjects, from the fate of the Mitchell Park Domes to the destruction of Dan Kiley’s landscape architecture at the Marcus Performing Arts Center. She’s dug up other stories, too, including the county’s quiet razing of a Civilian Conservation Corps building at Whitnall Park. Virginia, the author of a book about public and private gardens, gives tours of significant places, such as area parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, including during Jane’s Walk MKE, an annual series of walks that Virginia helps organize. She’s volunteered, too, with Lake Park Friends, Milwaukee Film and as a writing teacher for the Dominican Center in the Amani neighborhood. Recently, Virginia has been writing more about politics for the Shepherd Express, so she’s hip deep in the question of democracy in Milwaukee in 2020. Her home is filled with books and art and thriving plants.