Cate's review
Cities and the Wealth of Nations
by Jane Jacobs
Cate's review
Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs
Cate's review
rating:
recommended for: urbanists, economists, anyone interested in understanding current predicaments
It's Jane Jacobs--what else do I need to say! Okay, so everyone may not love Jacobs as much as I do, so I'll explain. Jacobs continues on the tradition of her previous books (Death and Life of Great American Cities, the Economy of Cities) and examines wealth, poverty, and ingenuity. The basic premise of the book is that cities are the fundamental economic unit, not nations as economists from Adam Smith on have assumed. This assumption may seem trivial unless you understand how varying jurisdictions raise tax revenue and use tarriffs. In changing this assumption Jacobs makes a case for why some cities are successful and why others are not--in short, successful cities are import-replacing. While the book doesn't exhaust all the topics covered (like analogies between natural ecosystems and economic systems) Jacobs does write about this relationship 15 years later in the the Nature of Economies. By itself, Cities and the Wealth of Nations may seem confusing, but taken as a chapter in...more
