I reread this after a year. A quick read. Jacobs has a sour view of the world. She repeats her same complaints about how roads are not useful to people,only cars, how families are not functioning well,and predicts terrible things about the world ahead. She may be right, I don't know but there are some hopeful things out there. Online social networks where extended families,old friends from childhood are coming together may make a difference.However as a walker in the city I do agree with her take on roads.

I have only two things to add to the other reviews, in which most of what is written I agree with.

First, is that this work seemed horribly out of focus. Some of the anecdotes were quite good, but the failure to create any sort of coherent theme to the work rendered the entire book a sloppy mish-mash. As in, her discussion of the history of traffic engineering was quite interesting, yet she fails to tie what amounts to the actions of a priesthood into her larger thesis.

Second, she seems unwilling or unable to come to terms with the fact that the USA and Canada, as democracies, mean that the government at some level or other is going to reflect majority opinion. The chapter on taxes being one in particular where she goes through the oddest contortions to avoid discussing this. Not sure what that is all about. ( )

The great Jane Jacobs' last book, Dark Age Ahead, will be familiar territory to her many devoted fans. Jacobs ruminates on the potential for it all winding down and falling apart in the West . This downer of a thesis may seem like an inevitable topic for someone in her late 80s, when Jacobs wrote this -- but her pessimism is not without merit and foundation. She identifies a series of structural problems in western societies that are eroding the foundations of our culture: pressure on families/communities; credentialism overwhelming higher education; the slackening pursuit of real science; the unwise levying and use of taxation; and the lack of policing in the professions.

Jacobs' thoughts often wander back to her familiar passions -- at times it seems as if proper levels of urban density and some nice clean electric streetcars would solve just about any crisis -- but there's plenty here that's cogent and provocative as well.

The weakness of the book is her reliance on trendy but not very trustworthy popular 'scholars' such as Jared Diamond and Karen Armstrong for much of her background on what makes societies come apart. I'd rather have heard more of Jacobs' own ideas.

These quibbles aside, Dark Age Ahead is not a bad place to start if you want to get into Jacobs' work. Her blunt, inimitable style is on display; her maddeningly unplaceable political stance is maintained; and at under 200 pages (if you skip the discursive endnotes, which you most certainly can) it's a brief and accessible work, much more so than her bombshell signature book, The Death and Life of American Cities. ( )

Does Jane Jacobs really think that we are facing a breakdown in society like unto that described in her first chapter? People starving on the highways, a breakdown in social cohesion, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria? It is hard to tell from the rest of her book. Ultimately, it seems the coming "dark age" described by Jacobs is in reality more of a "period of rolling blackouts."

She identifies five "pillars of society" that she sees as showing signs of cultural decay, but fails to adequately explain why the failure of those five pillars leads to the Dark Ages, or define those five clearly, or present more than anecdotal support for her views of their decay. If she truly sees a breakdown in society profound enough to be called a "Dark Age," she fails to explain the nature of the threat with any clarity (unless poor traffic management is the hitherto unknown Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse). Jacobs further fails, except in very limited fashion, to even address contrary views of society's progression.

Ultimately, this is a longish essay masquerading as a profound book, a tract instead of a treatise. It is sloppily organized, poorly expounded, and the supporting notes are underwhelming. Yet I would not have picked up this book if I were not concerned that there is a chance we are on the brink of a collapse, or at least a great change in Western Civilization. If my own fears are any indicator, there is a serious study to be made of the decay of our society, and the potential dangers we face. If this book was supposed to be taken as a serious review of this possibility, it should have been better devised and its arguments better supported. As it is, I am oddly comforted by this book's failure to convince me. ( )

I love Jane Jacobs' work, but someone who understood that cities grow organically and that human life is resilient should have had more interesting things to say about the future than this relatively off-the-shelf warmed-over Neil Postman doomsaying. ( )