The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and keenly detailed, a monumental work that provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.
"The most refreshing, provacative, stimulating and exciting study of this [great problem] which I have seen. It fairly crackles with bright honesty and common sense." —The New York Times
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.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
Look - this book is a great example of why you’ve gotta read the books that are so famous that you assume you already know what is in there.
The book is not perfect. It can range into anecdote, but is never feels quite so personal as that you can really imagine the plight of those suffering in the experiments of public housing or the delight of those in the mixed use urban areas Jacobs champions and clearly personally enjoys. It uses statistics and Jacobs is clearly comfortable playing in the language of numbers, but restrains itself from fully calculating the public and personal costs of urban redevelopment.
The reason I suspect is that, while Jacobs is a deeply serious authority on this subject, she has purposefully written a delightful book that does not take itself too seriously. The prose captures your attention and imagination. The truths Jacobs has captured from her observation of thoughtful observation of urban life are profound, but strike the reader as commonsense. The book is a damning indictment of an entire branch of academics, one to which countless smart people devoted their lives, and one that had a direct impact on the lives and living spaces of countless more. It contains that message and supports it with hard won fact. But it does so in a friendly, optimistic, good natured way that belies the depth and comprehensiveness of the study.
The book surprises, delights, challenges, and ultimately convinces you that the simple layout of almost every American urban and suburban area has been a complete failure for reasons that are obvious if you would only stop and look around. And the ultimate pleasure of the book is that you get to stop and look around with Jacobs as your guide.
The book is not perfect. It can range into anecdote, but is never feels quite so personal as that you can really imagine the plight of those suffering in the experiments of public housing or the delight of those in the mixed use urban areas Jacobs champions and clearly personally enjoys. It uses statistics and Jacobs is clearly comfortable playing in the language of numbers, but restrains itself from fully calculating the public and personal costs of urban redevelopment.
The reason I suspect is that, while Jacobs is a deeply serious authority on this subject, she has purposefully written a delightful book that does not take itself too seriously. The prose captures your attention and imagination. The truths Jacobs has captured from her observation of thoughtful observation of urban life are profound, but strike the reader as commonsense. The book is a damning indictment of an entire branch of academics, one to which countless smart people devoted their lives, and one that had a direct impact on the lives and living spaces of countless more. It contains that message and supports it with hard won fact. But it does so in a friendly, optimistic, good natured way that belies the depth and comprehensiveness of the study.
The book surprises, delights, challenges, and ultimately convinces you that the simple layout of almost every American urban and suburban area has been a complete failure for reasons that are obvious if you would only stop and look around. And the ultimate pleasure of the book is that you get to stop and look around with Jacobs as your guide.
