O'Donovan's review
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
I too read death and life alongside invisible cities! What an awesome combination...
O'Donovan's review
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
O'Donovan's review
rating:
recommended for: People who spend a lot of time thinking about where and how they live. Also, my friend Andrew.
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 completely untrained lady who just happens to live in a city -- starts spending time asking questions about the reasons why certain neighborhoods and boroughs thrive, and others die, and whether cities exist in a cyclical or linear fashion, and a thousand other things.
And on the strength of her curiosity, she became this hybrid of an urban planner and anthropologist and social engineer who never got formal training, because she didn't need it at all, and now people study her. She appeals...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 completely untrained lady who just happens to live in a city -- starts spending time asking questions about the reasons why certain neighborhoods and boroughs thrive, and others die, and whether cities exist in a cyclical or linear fashion, and a thousand other things.
And on the strength of her curiosity, she became this hybrid of an urban planner and anthropologist and social engineer who never got formal training, because she didn't need it at all, and now people study her. She appeals...more
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I too read death and life alongside invisible cities! What an awesome combination...