Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments." Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners. Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities. It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable. The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Great read:
I bought this book as a required reading for school. It was very easy to read and covered many interesting topics. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning more about the urban environment.
The triumph of common sense:
In an age when architects and planners were spouting all kinds of brave-new-world nonsense (or mindlessly absorbing it, or even worse - building it), Jacobs burst onto the scene with an incredible dose of sanity mixed with common sense and wisdom, carefully observing the urban environment and drawing a host of remarkably sensible conclusions. For some reason we architects seem always at risk of believing our own nuttiest fantasies. Jacobs is a perennial corrective.
Read it!:
Still relevant, still useful....and still ignored by the common city engineer. Our city's planners need to re-read this sucker.
Read it:
This is a book that relates to designers, and city planners as well as the "un-educated". Reading this book will certainly inform one on the purpose and importance of city planning.
