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 The Death and Life of Great American Cities :: 067974195X
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| A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities. Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
I loved (what I read of) this book. I live in Boston, I care about politics, policy, and societal issues in general. My wife used to work for a zoning commission, so I was familiar with some of the ethos of city planners and the pseudo-morality of zoning. This book affirmed the beliefs I already held about the ills of city planning, and the joy of laissez-faire market city growth. In short, Jacobs champions the will of cities to diversify and decide for itself (i.e. - through the free market) what kind of shops, buildings, and housing should be together and where. If you happen to agree with some of this, you will love this book. If you don't, you may be compelled and (hopefully) convinced by her writing.
But as my title indicates, this is not for everyone. It is as dry as it is witty (but you have to look for the wit). Although it was published in 1961, its principles are still in place, but you may find yourself lost in the 1950's and 60's examples of the cities we currently occupy. It is not necessarily a textbook, but so scholarly that if you do not have a professional or academic association with city planning, you might, like I did, decide that while you enjoy what you've read of the book, it's not of dire importance that you finish it.
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Author: Guest
Jane Jacobs writes well and the book is full of a-ha! moments. Chapter 2 is brilliant. If your city or neighborhood is threatened by developers who don't share your values, or you want to plan a development that will remind people of San Francisco or Paris, then this book is for you.
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Author: Guest
The great joy in Jacobs's book is that it's rabidly empirical, which makes it empowering. Naïve change-the-world types like me tend to get stuck on the size of the world they want to change. For instance: thinking about the problems Jacobs is addressing, I'm likely to go like so: "We need to reduce the number of cars in cities. So let's tax people who drive into cities, like London does, and boost mass-transit spending. But that would cost a lot, and we don't have the political strength for that. Man, city problems are hard."
Jacobs is altogether more productive. Her approach is: let's look at sidewalks. What purpose to they serve? How do we make sidewalks better? Then let's look at parks. What constitutes a good park? Why do some parks thrive and others turn into weedy, abandoned messes? Then let's look at streets. Then at slums. Then at districts. Then finally look at cities. At each level, let's ask some really specific questions, and look at which approaches work for different cities to solve each of those problems.
This makes her a) empirical, b) productive, c) encouraging and d) a good engineer. We need more of her. I can quibble with some of her specific details, but her program and her ideologial orientation are so spot on that I can only recommend you go out and read her book. It'll make you appreciate the particular problems of cities (they are not just larger suburbs, and much of urban planning, according to her, stems from the belief that they are), will make you understand the mistakes that urban planners have made, and will get you inspired to be a local activist.
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Author: Guest
I first heard of this book referenced in Steven Johnson's "Emergence". I asked a friend if he'd heard of it, and the next thing I knew, I was being sent home with his copy with an assignment !
I just couldn't put it down. This isn't some abstract theoretical snotty work by an academia - this is an inspired and thorough examination of what makes a neighborhood functional, and what destroys that functionality. So much of what Jane Jacobs has to say is so common-sensual, it makes you wonder how on earth the central planners managed to wrest so much authority and control from the public.
Her observations and critiques are even more relevant today, and most of her predictions have been born out since the initial puiblication of this work back in '61.
But what moved me the most about this book was Jane's amazing sharp ability to observe and document and understand what is going on in the street. Again, this is not a book written by some dead old intellectual that lives in an upscale, isolated neighborhood you and I will never live in. This is a book written by a woman who loves her home and her neighborhood and the people in it.
What makes a street safe ? What makes it unsafe ? What is the function of the sidewalk ? How do people use the street and the landmarks in their neighborhood ? What do major landmarks DO to a neighborhood ? The answers to these questions will probably surprise you.
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Author: Guest
No book in the 20th Century has done more to shape how we think about cities.
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