The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable. The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.

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.

Ilene Rosoff - WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women

In this ground-breaking work written over 30 years ago, Jane Jacobs not only threw a monkey wrench into conventional thinking on the structure of cities and helped reshape urban planning, but she did so as a non-expert and as a woman–both historical taboos in the world of intellectual analysis. With flowing, descriptive prose, Jane's work leads us to think about each element of a city–sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, government, economy–as a syergistic unit both encompassing structure and going beyond it to the functioning dynamics of our habitats. On a revealing journey through the problems of modern urban centers, artificially engineered to meet political and economic agendas, we arrive at a greater understanding of the intrinsic nature of our cities–as they should be.

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning ... [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable. The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition "Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as 'perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning ... [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments.' Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable."--Provided by publisher The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. ... [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jane Jacobs's tour de force is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It remains sensible, knowledgeable, readable, and indispensable. --- Book Description Part one: The peculiar nature of cities. The uses of sidewalks: safety The uses of sidewalks: contact The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children The uses of neighborhood parks The uses of city neighborhoods Part two: The conditions for city diversity. The generators of diversity The need for primary mixed uses The need for small blocks The need for aged buildings The need for concentration Some myths about diversity Part three: Forces of decline and regeneration. The self-destruction of diversity The curse of border vacuums Unslumming and slumming Gradual money and cataclysmic money Part four: Different tactics. Subsidizing dwellings Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles Visual order: its limitations and possibilities Salvaging projects Governing and planning districts The kind of problem a city is. Introduction, THE PECULIAR NATURE OF CITIES The uses of sidewalks: safety, The uses of sidewalks: contact, The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children, The uses of neighborhoods, The uses of city neighborhoods, THE CONDITIONS FOR CITY DIVERSITY The generators of diversity, The need for primary mixed uses, The need for small blocks, The need for aged buildings, The need for concentration, Some myths about diversity, FORFCES OF DECLINE AND REGENERATION The self-destruction of diversity, The curse of border vacuums, Unslumming and slumming, Gradual money and cataclysmic money, DIFFERENT TACTICS Subsidizing dwellings, Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, Visual order: its limitations and possibilities, Salvaging projects, Governing and planning districts, The kind of problem a city is, Index Jane Jacobs critiques the comprehensive modernist approach to urban planning after 1945. By the 1950s, various American cities were pursuing ambitious urban renewal policies, influenced by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier's concept of the "Radiant City." Jacobs sees this being utterly at odds with urban realities, and leading to the destruction of the city as a living community. This futurist vision insisted on the absolute segregation of the city's different activities into separate zones, linked (though also physically isolated) by super-highways set in wide parkland landscaping. The colossal physical destruction that was necessary to implement this vision tore apart the traditional multi-activity street and densely populated neighborhood that Jacobs avers is the bedrock of urban living Penetrating analysis of the functions and organization of city neighborhoods, the forces of deterioration and regeneration, and the necessary planning innovations