The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)

Written in 1961, this awesome book pretty much explains why the big city projects of the 50's and 60's didn't work, why tearing down grand old buildings and decaying low-density neighborhoods can be equally bad, and how cities work. It sort of predicts how cities have bounced back in the 50 years since Jane Jacobs wrote the book.

Jane Jacobs was responsible, among other things, for preventing New York City from ramming a freeway through Greenwich Village. Thank you, Jane. ( )

One of the great books about city planning. It got me interested in housing and community development when I first read it in the 1980's. I have been know to quote Jacobs when I am blogging about development. ( )

In the early 1960s, as American cities continued their decline into blight, as the suburbs ballooned, and as city planners tried urban renewal methods such as building massive projects and installing huge expressways, one community activist (or perhaps "active community member" would be more apt since activities implies troublemaker and active community members should be viewed as no such thing) believed that these planners, and planning in general, were going about it all wrong. Her name was Jane Jacobs and she decided to put pen to paper, and oh did she ever:

"This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those now taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday supplements and women's magazines. My attack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods or a hair-splitting about fashions in design. It is an attack, rather, on the principles and aims that have shaped modern, orthodox city planning and rebuilding."

That, my friends, is the first paragraph of the book. If you're not already in love with a woman, who had no formal training in urban planning other than what she knew from her own thorough observations, would throw a grenade into the doubtlessly male-dominated world of 1961 urban planning, then I will never be able to make you love Jane Jacobs. But I will at least try to make you interested in her seminal work.

Jacobs views large American cities as unique from the (then even more common) small town life in America. In her view, there were few secrets in small towns because everyone know someone or at least knew someone who knew you, and this knowledge helped to keep actions in the community in check. In contrast, cities are made up of strangers. Lots of strangers. So a different system is needed to drive a safe and economically vibrant community. In Jacob's view, the main driver for both safety and vitality in neighborhoods was streets with lots of foot traffic, at all hours not just certain hours, and lots of eyes (such as stay-at-home parents and business owners) watching them (in the natural course of their days, parents watching children playing, etc). Jacobs envisioned four components, all of which were required, to make a neighborhood thrive:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function, preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.
2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
3. The district must mingle building that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.
4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.

Jacobs divides the book into four sections, laying first the groundwork regarding how cities operate so that in the second part she can describe in detail each of her four criteria. The remaining parts of the book go into further detail about implementation, with more than one reference to Robert Moses (Jacobs is at least partly responsible for stopping his plan to raze parts of her neighborhood, Greenwich Village, and others such as Soho and Little Italy in order to build a twelve-lane Lower Manhattan Expressway. Moses is profiled in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro which has been on my long list of books to read and is now due to be upgraded to my short list).

Jacobs knew cities. She watched cities. She loved cities. And she clearly didn't shy away from fighting for what she knew. This book can be viewed as her manifesto on cities and had become a classic for the field. It is highly recommended. ( )

This is one of those books every city dweller SHOULD read. ( )

The Death and Life of Great American Cities was an excellent clearly presented analysis of what makes cities work and what doesn't along with practical suggestions to help problem neighborhoods. I don't keep abreast of what is presently being done in city planning but I get the impression that not enough has changed since it was written 50 years ago. ( )