The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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Book Summary Information

Author: Jane Jacobs
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1992-12-01
ISBN: 067974195X
Number of pages: 458
Publisher: Vintage

Book Reviews of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Book Review: The triumph of common sense
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

Summary of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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.

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