Joshua's review
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
Joshua's review
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Joshua's review
rating:
I reckon I see what all the fuss is about. Jacobs makes a compelling argument based upon observations the reader may reproduce just by living in any 'Great American City'. Her well-reasoned and anectdotally illustrated explanations of the necessity for primary mixed uses, small blocks, aged buildings, high concentration, etc, seem a good foundation for a functional model of human-scale urbanism. Furthermore, the overall concept with which she closes her book, that of cities as a problem in organized complexity, ala the life sciences, and of humans as an aspect of nature, our cities no less natural than beehives or rabbit warrens, appeals to me as a powerful potential disarmer of the typically American morbidity toward cities and idealization of the countryside. (I have a reservation or two concerning her seeming assumptions that every person is as fascinated as she by complexity and even mild chaos... but then, she'd be more or less right to assume that about me, so...) One of th...more
