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
A classic:
If you are interested in community building, urban planning, and city life in general, this is a must-read. Though the book is older, the themes and ideas stand the test of time.
EXCELLENT AND TIMELESS IN HER EVALUATION OF OUR URBAN ENVIRONMENT:
WELL WORTH READING, TIMELESS IN HER LOOK CITY LIFE AND HOW THE PHYSICAL LAYOUT BOTH INFLUENCES HOW WE LIVE, WORK, PLAY. TERRIFFIC BOOK.
A Classic:
This is a classic book for any Planning student. Jane Jacobs has a different and valuable point of view of how cities work. In my opinion this is kind of a slow read but it’s not technical. She provides many examples of her own experiences with city life in New York. The book gets you thinking about how your own city works. It’s not a knock on Planners, but it comes pretty close. You have to read it with an open mind. It’s also a good book for people who know nothing about Planning, she doesn’t assume that everyone knows what she’s talking about.
The single best description of the workings of the urban form ever written.:
In one work Jane Jacobs has succeeded in creating one of the most influential urban planning tomes to date. Nearly every word of this 40+ year old book rings as true today as it did in its first publication.
Every aspiring urban planner, architect, or politician for a major urban center should be tied down and forced to read this book cover to cover.
A milestone for city thinkers:
This books presents some clear ideas of how to make a city livable and safety. With some concrete examples of bad and good urban policies in North American cities it shows the importance of diversed land-use neighborhoods for the ‘life’ of urban areas.
