The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs s monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities. Read The Death and Life of Great American Cities – kino-fada.fr My favorite quotes from my re read of this book last week with city eye candy On TRUST The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all p 56 On PRIVACY A good city street neighborhood achieves a marvel of balance between its people s determination to have essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or help from the people ar My favorite quotes from my re read of this book last week with city eye candy On TRUST The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all p 56 On PRIVACY A good city street neighborhood achieves a marvel of balance between its people s determination to have essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or help from the people around p.59 On the need for CASUAL CONTACTS and PUBLIC SPACE Under a well compartmentalized local system, it ... This is a common assumption that human beings are charming in small numbers and noxious in large numbers. I picked up this book immediately after finishing The Power Broker, and I highly recommend this sequence to anyone who has the time The conflict between Robert Moses, czar like planner of New York City for almost half a century, and Jane Jacobs, ordinary citizen and activist, has become the source of legend There is a book about it, Wrestling with Moses, a well made documentary, Citizen Th...I know some people who will balk at my 3 star rating, so I will explain myself As a body of work, it is amazing and I adore Jane Jacobs However, a good portion of this book still manages to be dull, despite being very important I can t help it I dig nonfiction, and I think 3 stars for a non fiction book means it s pretty darn good, because who ever finished a cruddy non fiction book unless they were taking a class So, I read it voluntarily and give it 3 stars on the highly sensitive and m I know some people who will balk at my 3 star rating, so I will explain myself As a body of work, it is amazing and I adore Jane Jacobs However, a good portion of this book still manages to be dull, despite being very important I can t help it I dig nonfiction, and I think 3 stars for a non fiction book means it s pretty darn good, because who ever finished a cruddy non fiction b...The Death and Life of Great American Cities was both a frustrating and an illuminating book.It was frustrating because it was long, and in many parts dull I was yawning at 3 o clock in the afternoon while drinking coffee and reading this This book is a fabulous soporific and I recommend it heartily to insomniacs everywhere.It was a...An urban classic that remains applicable.Jacobs makes a strong case and repeats it over and over.You know that feeling you get when someone expresses a political belief that you share, but explains the position using arguments that you find unavailing, anecdotal, or specious That s what this book felt like It was like de Tocqueville takes on modern American cities inductive reasoning applied selectively to undergird a set of beliefs and proselytize for their superiority.I had such high hopes for this one, but it dragged on relentlessly I made it about halfway through this book before ab You know that feeling you get when someone expresses a political belief that you share, but explains the position using argu...This is one of the most important books about cities ever written It s what helps you understand why cities work, why they don t work, what makes a neighborhood, what destroys neighborhoods and how almost everything city planners and governments think matters, doesn t Seth Roberts is probably the biggest Jane Jacobs fan there is He s what she calls an insider outsider insider in terms of understanding, outsider in terms of career She was an activist and a student who understood the system This is one of the most important books about cities ever written It s what helps you understand why cities work, why they don t work, what makes a neighborhood, what destroys neighborhoods and how almost everything city planners and governments think matters, doesn t Seth Roberts is probably the biggest Jane Jacobs fan there is He s what she calls an insider outsider insider in terms of understanding, outsider in terms of career S...This took me a while to read because it was easy to put down This book is famous for being one of the first sources of critique of American city planning, and many of her arguments seem to hold water even today This said, I constantly asked myself where is the science while reading this I wonder if it had been published in this decade, would she be allowed to draw so many conclusions based almost entirely on person...Favorite passages To generate exuberant diversity in a city s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable The distrct must servethan one purpose preferablythan two , the blocks must be short, the buildings must vary in age and condition, and the population must be dense.Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, which used to be considered by many critics one of the most beautiful of American avenues it was, in those days, essentially a suburban avenue of large, fine houses with lar Favorite passages To generate exuberant diversity in a city s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable The distrct must servethan one purpose preferablythan two , the blocks must be short, the buildings must vary in age and condition, and the population must be dense.Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, which used to be considered by many critics one of the most beautiful of American avenues it was, in those days, essentially a suburban avenue of large, fine houses with large, fine grounds , has now been excoriated, with justice as one of the ugliest and most disorganized of city streets In converting to outright urban use, Euclid Avenue has converted to homogeneity office buildings again, and again a chaos of shouted, but superficial, ...Jane Jacobs is brilliant Her insights on urban planning are both practical and exciting.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
  • English
  • 23 March 2017
  • Hardcover
  • 472 pages
  • 0375508732
  • Jane Jacobs
  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities