Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "p...
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Dec 15, 2007
O'Donovan
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It's an odd confluence of events that I was reading this very concrete, thoughtful book about the ways Americans experience and use cities -- well, environments in general, but urban environments in particular -- at the same time that I was reading Italo Calvino's dreamy Invisible Cities.
I can't remember if someone told me about Jane Jacobs or if I read something somewhere ... but I remember being fascinated by the premise of the author, more than the book. A layperson -- a completel More...
I can't remember if someone told me about Jane Jacobs or if I read something somewhere ... but I remember being fascinated by the premise of the author, more than the book. A layperson -- a completel More...
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Dec 26, 2008
Jane Jacobs is brilliant. Her insights on urban planning are both practical and exciting.
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Sep 24, 2007
Katy
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I know some people who will balk at my 3-star rating, so I will explain myself. As a body of work, it is amazing and I adore Jane Jacobs. However, a good portion of this book still manages to be dull, despite being very important. (I can't help it!) I dig nonfiction, and I think 3 stars for a non-fiction book means it's pretty darn good, because who ever finished a cruddy non-fiction book unless they were taking a class? So, I read it voluntarily and give it 3 stars on the highly-sensitive
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Jan 25, 2009
Matt
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Favorite passages:
To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable: The distrct must serve more than one purpose (preferably more than two), the blocks must be short, the buildings must vary in age and condition, and the population must be dense.
Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, which used to be considered by many critics one of the most beautiful of American avenues (it was, in those days, essentially a suburban avenue of lar More...
To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable: The distrct must serve more than one purpose (preferably more than two), the blocks must be short, the buildings must vary in age and condition, and the population must be dense.
Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, which used to be considered by many critics one of the most beautiful of American avenues (it was, in those days, essentially a suburban avenue of lar More...
Nov 20, 2011
Marks54
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I had heard of this book before, but had not gotten around to reading it. I decided to after reading references to it in "The Great Reset" by Richard Florida. This is a stunning and thought-provoking book that I could not put down. While it is fifty years old this year, the ideas are still fresh, although the details of the cities discussed have certainly changed.
This book is an attack on the classic central planning view of urban planning and development. Jacobs espouses More...
This book is an attack on the classic central planning view of urban planning and development. Jacobs espouses More...
Jul 03, 2011
Andrea
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One of the books that all planners are supposed to have read, I know it's a bit shocking that I have only now read it. And regrettable. It deserves every ounce of it's status as a classic (if such status were to be measured in ounces). It's eminently readable (and isn't that a pleasure in a book of this kind), but also incredibly insightful and of course I love how it resonates so brilliantly with my experience living in many different cities while toppling most accepted planning theory. The mor
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Apr 05, 2010
Alan
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Savage, brilliant, and brilliantly savage, this scathing indictment of sterile and soulless city planning remains, sadly, as relevant today as when it was written, some 50 years ago. Jacobs pulls no punches whatsoever when she's dissecting problems in the Bronx, in the works of Le Corbusier and Lewis Mumford, with the pernicious effects that automobiles have on living cities, or in the general case of urban renewal and the single-use, single-aged "neighborhood," about which she says,
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Nov 20, 2011
Mike
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When I first read it, I knew very little about Jane Jacobs or urban planning--and I was completely blown away by this book. I've always intuitively felt drawn to walking neighborhoods and tight-knit communities; I can even remember my grandmother telling me stories of how they used to walk to the big department stores in downtown Dallas when she was young. And yet the cities I grew up in were mostly spread-out, suburban areas dominated by over-crowded expressways, and where living near the cit
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Dec 11, 2010
Apio
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Of course, ultimately I want to do away with the city. It represents the values of civilization which boil down to alienated and centralized power and wealth. Yet there are aspects of the city that I enjoy, particularly the opportunity for chance encounters with stimulating strangers. Where human beings do not congregate in large numbers, the opportunities for such encounters are much reduced or even disappear. But contemporary cities are built to serve the needs of capitalism and the state. And
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Jun 12, 2010
I've never read anything about city planning or urban studies before, so this was all quite new to me. Jacobs creates a vivid, wide ranging critique of the dominant forms of city planning, which are driven as she compellingly points out, by stupidly reactionary, romantic notions about how people should be made to live. I'd never really thought in a concerted way before about how things like sidewalk width, the ages of buildings, the the location of public buildings etc. would effect how people m
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Sep 16, 2010
Emily
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It took a few months, but I finally finished this book. I'm glad I did. This is a great book (like, capital-G great) because you think about its ideas after you've put the book down. You'll look at cities in a new way. Some things about the book that aren't so great: This book was written in the 1960s, so a lot of the examples are outdated or no longer relevant. And while Jane Jacobs thinks we don't need illustrations ("They're all around you!"), they would have been extremely he
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Jul 31, 2011
From ABA's 30 books every lawyer should read: Neal Katyal, director of the Center on National Security and the Law at Georgetown University Law School, recently stepped down as the United States’ acting solicitor general. A professor at Georgetown University, he was the lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay detainees in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that military commissions to try detainees violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and four Geneva Conventions.
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Dec 08, 2009
Phil
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Though it is somewhat dated, I still found it helpful in understanding what can contribute to and detract from city vitality, and what leads to what Jacobs calls "The Great Blight of Dullness" which can be found in many cities (and probably all suburbs). She discusses what makes city streets successful as places where people spend time, what contributes to dead areas where people (and then businesses) avoid, housing issues, transportation issues, political forces in cities, etc. She dr
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Nov 22, 2009
Pam
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This took me a while to read because it was easy to put down. This book is famous for being one of the first sources of critique of American city planning, and many of her arguments seem to hold water even today. This said, I constantly asked myself "where is the science?" while reading this. I wonder if it had been published in this decade, would she be allowed to draw so many conclusions based almost entirely on personal observation and opinion. My assessment of this book mirrors
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Sep 11, 2011
Noah
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Very interesting book, but not very well written and drags on for about 200 pages more than it needs to. It's supposed to be one of the great books in urban planning, written in 1960s Greenwich Village, so I expected a tome to central planning, and was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be relatively libertarian. The author criticizes the urban planning ideology of the day, responsible for housing projects and garden cities, and based on the belief that residential areas need to be sol
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Mar 05, 2011
Mia
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A must-read in the canon of urban planning literature, Jacobs crafts an appealing vision of urban life. That is, until the realization that not every neighborhood is as equipped to fight encroachments of highways, sanitation facilities, and characterless open spaces as NYC's Greenwich Village was (and is). A good counterbalance to this book is Flint's account of Jacobs' battle with Robert Moses, king of the parkway and unilateral decision-making. It paints Jacobs in an even light and while More...
Mar 02, 2011
Alice
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This book is seriously one of the most amazing works of non-fiction ever written. It's slow-going (I spent about a month on it) but entirely worth every page. Even if you're not obsessed with urban planning (I'm putting the bias out in the open), I still think that you will be hard pressed to find a work of non-fiction this good that has kept its relevance and applications fifty years later.
Jane Jacobs writes passionately about how to improve cities, how to look at cities, and how t More...
Jane Jacobs writes passionately about how to improve cities, how to look at cities, and how t More...
Mar 07, 2010
Eyoki
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Good: commonsensical (or does it just seem so in retrospect?), imaginative, solutions-focused, people-oriented and persuasively argued. Bad: evidence is mostly anecdotal (despite her enthusiasm for the scientific method) and she labours her points.
Her point about not forcing successful people out via income segregation is well made - especially as this is still regularly suggested in the name of 'fairness'; and her discussions about public transport and the alternative to a proliferation of ca More...
Her point about not forcing successful people out via income segregation is well made - especially as this is still regularly suggested in the name of 'fairness'; and her discussions about public transport and the alternative to a proliferation of ca More...
Dec 04, 2009
Catherine
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I'm still somewhere in the middle of this book. This is a classic on urban planning written by someone who was an outsider and sought to question conventional wisdom. Jacobs is an entertaining and opinionated writer, with some nice observations of how city neighborhoods work and how life in the city is influenced by the style of development. (It's quite fun to match her observations to your own experience of cities-- which types of neighborhood feel safe, where you choose to spend your time,
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Mar 22, 2011
Jeff
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I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the “social structure of sidewalk life” and the focus on the people who create the “ballet of Hudson Street” and other neighborhoods. She details the characters, the residents, not as abstract forms or statistics, but as the personalities all interacting that make up a neighborhood –and that make it work. I liked how she provided support for her arguments by interweaving them in a “story like” manner – for instance instead of throwing a bunch of stat
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Sep 11, 2011
lysa
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'This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding.' (3)
Thus begins a CONSTRUCTIVE critique that is refreshing, direct and accessible to the reader. Though it was written in the early 1960s, the facts are still relevant today - we must rethink city planning if we want to provide safe and secure shelters for our citizens. Rather than just pointing fingers at what is wrong with modern urban planning, Jacobs posits 4 criteria (small blocks, aged buildings, mixed primary use More...
Thus begins a CONSTRUCTIVE critique that is refreshing, direct and accessible to the reader. Though it was written in the early 1960s, the facts are still relevant today - we must rethink city planning if we want to provide safe and secure shelters for our citizens. Rather than just pointing fingers at what is wrong with modern urban planning, Jacobs posits 4 criteria (small blocks, aged buildings, mixed primary use More...
Jul 29, 2011
BEST BOOK EVER! Okay, that might be a little hyperbolic, but I LOVED this. I thought I knew what she was going to say, and I 100% did not expect the level of insight she demonstrates. This is a great book for anyone who cares about cities or neighborhoods or streets. I found myself pulling up maps of cities I love and verifying her rules. I would compare this to Guns, Germs, and Steel in the way it gives you a mode of thinking about the world that is highly intuitive once you think about it
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Nov 04, 2011
Alice
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This book surprised me because it really only applied to the downtown, inner cities in the East of the US. I've heard so much about Jane Jacobs from "smart growth" and other planning people that I assumed she had things to say about new development and sustainable planning. Now, I'm wondering if the people who idolize her have actually read any of her books. I'm sure it was revolutionary at the time, but it's really only applicable to a very narrow type of city and also quite specific
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Dec 15, 2011
Amélie
rated it:
Juste un tout petit mot sur ce livre, que j'ai lu surtout pour l'école --
Aussi accessible & rafraîchissant que peut l'être un livre qui parle essentiellement de planification urbaine -- c'est-à-dire : pas beaucoup si c'est pas le genre de choses qui vous intéresse, mais extrêmement beaucoup si vous êtes habitués de lire des études de cas ou des théorisations hyper-sèches sur la ville (oui oui, je parle de moi). Jacobs a une façon très intuitive d'aborder les enjeux qui l'intéressent, & More...
Aussi accessible & rafraîchissant que peut l'être un livre qui parle essentiellement de planification urbaine -- c'est-à-dire : pas beaucoup si c'est pas le genre de choses qui vous intéresse, mais extrêmement beaucoup si vous êtes habitués de lire des études de cas ou des théorisations hyper-sèches sur la ville (oui oui, je parle de moi). Jacobs a une façon très intuitive d'aborder les enjeux qui l'intéressent, & More...
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May 30, 2011
Lcpatricio
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Com um texto muito envolvente, Jane Jacobs escreve sobre o que torna as ruas seguras ou inseguras; sobre o que vem a ser um bairro e sua função dentro do complexo organismo que é a cidade; sobre os motivos que fazem um bairro permanecer pobre enquanto outros se revitalizam; sobre os perigos do excesso de dinheiro para a construção e sobre os perigos da escassez de diversidades. Compreensiva, humana e muitas vezes indignada, a monumental obra de Jane Jacobs fornece uma base para avaliarmos a vita
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Aug 14, 2011
Blythe
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“American downtowns are not declining mysteriously, because they are anachronisms, nor because their users have been drained away by automobiles. They are being witlessly murdered, in good part by deliberate policies of sorting out leisure uses from work uses, under the misapprehension that this is orderly city planning” (171).
“Borders can thus tend to form vacuums of use adjoining them. Or to put it another way, by oversimplifying the use of the city at one place, on a large s More...
“Borders can thus tend to form vacuums of use adjoining them. Or to put it another way, by oversimplifying the use of the city at one place, on a large s More...
Feb 18, 2011
Jo
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Jane Jacobs and her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities are credited with squelching Robert Moses's plans to build the Lower Manhattan Expressway in New York City. Can you picture Greenwich Village and Soho with a superhighway running through them? Jane's knowledge, passion, and adept activism are the reasons why such a thing doesn't exist. I first learned about her in Ric Burns marvelous documentary series entitled New York, and tracked down the single remaining copy of her book i
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Feb 03, 2011
Chris
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities was both a frustrating and an illuminating book.
It was frustrating because it was long, and in many parts dull: I was yawning at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while drinking coffee and reading this. This book is a fabulous soporific and I recommend it heartily to insomniacs everywhere.
It was also frustrating because it is showing its age. Jacobs longs for diverse neighborhoods with fruit stands and butcher shops that aren't coming More...
It was frustrating because it was long, and in many parts dull: I was yawning at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while drinking coffee and reading this. This book is a fabulous soporific and I recommend it heartily to insomniacs everywhere.
It was also frustrating because it is showing its age. Jacobs longs for diverse neighborhoods with fruit stands and butcher shops that aren't coming More...
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Aug 14, 2010
Jill
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I've lived in a city all my life but it's only been in recent years that I've started thinking a bit more deeply about the forces that shape the urban environment and what makes a city/parts of a city come alive or wither. Iconic infrastructural projects? Doing away with the old and shabby and replacing them with shiny new buildings? Rezoning?
Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities is often cited as the book which revamped the way people thought about city planning and d More...
Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities is often cited as the book which revamped the way people thought about city planning and d More...
