All you need to know about what makes a viable, renewable neighborhood and city

books:


	• The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs Vintage, 1992 - 458 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

All you need to know about what makes a viable, renewable neighborhood and city

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.

Timeless and Brilliant

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.

for more information click here

Classic

No book in the 20th Century has done more to shape how we think about cities.

How to teach engineering to a pie-in-the-sky type

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.

for more information click here

Should be Required Reading for Every Graduate of Urban Planning!

We all know what a difference lies between the ethereal and ideal world of EDUCATION and the hot asphalt of THE CITY STREETS right? Well, Ms. Jacobs really amplifies that ground zero viewpoint with wit, sardonic humor and daring insightfulness....As an Associate Planner for a city in Los Angeles County, I thought I saw and heard just about everything, including the moralists, hyper-semaritans, the beastly authoritarians and mind-numbing bureaucratic processes that alienate and disconnect home owners from that hopeful, comfortable sensation of "I own it" contentment. Jacobs makes an impressive argument regarding the seemingly impossible planning that is so badly needed but nearly non-existent in today's city management and community developmental thinking. If I had to sum up my impression of Jacob's book- it's loaded with lampooning, lambasting and bullyragging, and after the smoke clears, I'd simply describe the read as....damn "it's a cruel cruel world."

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Architectural Bestsellers, I
PoliSci 399 - Urban Politics
Understanding Urban Form
A Planner's Library
Meme Mutations

search for books
death and life, american, cities, death, great, life

Impressum / about us