Reviews
Book Description
A classic since its publication in 1961, this book is the defintive statement on American cities: what makes them safe, how they function, and why all too many official attempts at saving them have failed. From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Ilene Rosoff , February 1, 1997
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 synergistic 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. Excerpted from The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (as appears in The WomanSource Catalog & Review). Copyright(c) 1993. Reprinted by permission, all rights reserved
Among the most admirable and enjoyable sights to be found along the sidewalks of big cities are the ingenious adaptions of old quarters to new uses. The town-house parlor that becomes a craftsman's showroom, the stable that becomes a house, the basement that becomes an immigrants' club, the garage or brewery that becomes a theater, the beauty parlor that becomes the ground floor of a duplex, the warehouse that becomes a factory for Chinese food, the dancing school that becomes a pamphlet printer's, the cobbler's that becomes a church with lovingly painted windows-the stained glass of the poor, the butcher shop that becomes a restaurant: these are the kinds of minor changes occurring where city districts have vitality and are responsive to human needs.
Customer Comments
A reader from Boston, USA , January 26, 1999 
It's all true
Jane Jacobs said most of what there is to say about how cities work back in the early 60's. City lovers (or dwellers, or leaders, or builders) ignore her at their own peril. Plus, her style is wonderful: charming and razor-sharp. A treasure to read and reread. A reader from Kansas City, Missouri , August 21, 1998
Makes understanding how cities work easy
The book is written in simple enough language and concepts that you only have to live in a large city to understand what she is saying. Her concepts are easy to understand, but also make perfect sense. The best part of this book is applying what you read to your own city. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. maloney%40eba.ca from calgary, alberta, canada , July 10, 1998
it changed my career path!
When I was in university taking urban planning over 25 years ago, Jane Jacobs was required reading. It was the only book on the book list that I have since re-read. Ms. Jacobs outlook on the development of community and her examples of healthy and unhealthy communities is as pertinent today as it was 25 years ago. Her concepts of making our communities safe by keeping people on the streets is critical. Her ideas on mixing land uses to keep areas active all the time and returning to the old lifestyles of shop owners living above their stores, are critical to the safe and happy communities. Knowing your neighbours, not blocking views with garages and fences...sitting on your front porch with your after dinner coffee watching the children play games and tending your garden and meeting your neighbours...these are the things we need to get back to - and these are not neo-traditional, they are good common sense. Ms. Jacobs has lots of that! Tafari Smith (tafari25%40wharton.upenn.edu) from Philadelphia, PA , June 11, 1998 
So meticulously presented, it exhausting to read!!
This book should be required reading for every American. Mrs. Jacobs shows how the foolhardy ambitions and inept design of America's cities by every politician, architect, and urban planner had come to preclude our cities from being successful places where we want to live. What makes this book remarkable, however, is that Mrs. Jacobs offers pragmatic suggestions on how to resurrect our neighborhoods. The book's offerings fly in the face of what many scholarly urban planners accept as doctrine, but Mrs. Jacob's ideas work where the rest of us live - in real life. The book's only drawback is that it's a bit dated, and it's a bit too long. Mrs. Jacobs could have made her case in half the time. Still, this should not distract from her work. All we need are people brave enough to perform the radical surgery this book suggests. A reader , December 10, 1996
The Book That Will Win Her the Nobel in Economics...
This mind clearing book gets rid of the idea that cities are parasites on the innocent countryside. It tells how urban trading -- including the information trade -- are the beginning of wealth and the foundation for the supposed "agricultural revolution" of 6000 years ago. Urbanism doesn't come last, it comes first. If you get this wrong you get urban America. A few years after writing this superb book, Jacobs moved to Toronto, which the UN, Fortune magazine, and a lot of the rest of us think is one of the world's better addresses. I think the book should also see her to Scandinavia for the Nobels! A reader , October 11, 1996
The classic exposition of how cities work. A must-read.
Even 35 years after it was written, The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains the classic book on how cities work and how urban planners and others have naively destroyed functioning cities. It is widely known for its incisive treatment of those who would tear down functioning neighborhoods and destroy the lives and livelihoods of people for the sake of a groundless but intellectually appealing daydream. But although many see it as a polemic against urban planning, the best parts of it, the parts that have endeared it to many who love cities, are quite different. Death and Life is, first of all, a work of observation. The illustrations are all around us, she says, and we must go and look. She shows us parts of the city that are alive -- the streets, she says, are the city that we see, and it is the streets and sidewalks that carry the most weight -- and find the patterns that help us not merely see but understand. She shows us the city as an ecology -- a system of interactions that is more than merely the laying out of buildings as if they were a child's wooden blocks. But observation can mean simply the noting of objects. Ms. Jacobs writes beautifully, lovingly, of New York City and other urban places. Her piece "The Ballet of Hudson Street" is both an observation of events on the Greenwich Village street where she lived and a prose poem describing the comings and goings of the people, the rhythms of the shopkeepers and the commuters and others who use the street. In this day when "inner city" is a synonym for poverty and hopelessness, it is important to be reminded that cities are literally the centers of civilization, of business, of culture. This is just as true today as it was in the early 1960s when this was written. We in North America owe Jane Jacobs a great debt for her insight and her eloquence. |
