Poll: Have you read ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ by Jane Jacobs?
Fifty years ago Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a harsh criticism of the state of urban planning at the time.  Jacobs was 45 when Death and Life was first published. Tomorrow marks five years since her death at age 89.
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. (description via Left Bank Books)
I can think of no other book on urban planning and cities that continues to be debated decades later or have their own Facebook page.
The mistake made by Jacobs’s detractors and acolytes alike is to regard her as a champion of stasis—to believe she was advocating the world’s cities be built as simulacra of the West Village circa 1960. Admirers and opponents have routinely taken her arguments for complexity and turned them into formulas. But the book I just read was an inspiration to move forward without losing sight that cities are powerful, dynamic, ever-changing entities made up of myriad gestures big and small. The real notion is to build in a way that honors and nurtures complexity. And that’s an idea impossible to outgrow. (Metropolis)
The poll this week asks if you have read this book and your thoughts on it. Â The poll is in the upper right corner of the site.
– Steve Patterson
Yes, I’ve read the book and quite enjoyed it. I also read some other stuff by her, The Economy of Cities, which though only tangentially related to urban planning further developed some ideas. She argued that cities, rather than nation-states, were the true engines of economic development and discussed the various ways in which the economy works through them.
Yes, I’ve read the book and quite enjoyed it. I also read some other stuff by her, The Economy of Cities, which though only tangentially related to urban planning further developed some ideas. She argued that cities, rather than nation-states, were the true engines of economic development and discussed the various ways in which the economy works through them.
But she’s a smoker – how can you like her?!
But she’s a smoker – how can you like her?!
what changes have occurred in Urban Planning thought since Jacobs? What new things have planners come up with and what have they now dismissed?
what changes have occurred in Urban Planning thought since Jacobs? What new things have planners come up with and what have they now dismissed?
The last chapter is the best one: “The Kind Of Problem A City Is.” Her brilliant argument was that urban planning and architecture were the only disciplines that moved toward less complexity in their modern movements. Plan from the specific to the general and think in terms of systems; that apparently seemed quite counter intuitive to urban planners in 1961, but was just common sense for a lot of people. Today I think that has reversed somewhat; while the urban planning profession has pretty much given her a big group hug, a lot more regular folks than before see the built environment from the viewpoint of sixties-era traffic engineers. More lanes: yes, Bike lanes: no, Sidewalks: ambivalent.
I also enjoyed her final book “Dark Days Ahead”, which is kind of rambling, but there are a lot of intriguing ideas and she skewers traffic engineers some more, which makes it a fun read.
The last chapter is the best one: “The Kind Of Problem A City Is.” Her brilliant argument was that urban planning and architecture were the only disciplines that moved toward less complexity in their modern movements. Plan from the specific to the general and think in terms of systems; that apparently seemed quite counter intuitive to urban planners in 1961, but was just common sense for a lot of people. Today I think that has reversed somewhat; while the urban planning profession has pretty much given her a big group hug, a lot more regular folks than before see the built environment from the viewpoint of sixties-era traffic engineers. More lanes: yes, Bike lanes: no, Sidewalks: ambivalent.
I also enjoyed her final book “Dark Days Ahead”, which is kind of rambling, but there are a lot of intriguing ideas and she skewers traffic engineers some more, which makes it a fun read.