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Summary: Chicagolander
Review: Everything about this book makes sense. As a resident of a suburb of Chicago, every time I go to the city I see a few parts that are fascinating and energetic, and others that seem so unhealthy. This book makes all of that make so much more sense. The areas that I see that are interesting and successful have diverse primary uses -- the cultural centers, commerce and residences are all together. They have a mixture of old and new buildings so that less profitable ventures that still draw people can continue to fluourish. They have public transportationn that even I can figure out and a variety of obstacles make driving incovenient (and encourage people to use more efficient buses and trains). The sidewalks are broad and people watch out for each other, even though there are plenty of crazies. Places like this, like Michigan Avenue, show me that Mrs. Jacobs at least had some things right about the properties of vital cities.
What saddens me though is that it doesn't seem as though her ideas have caught on in the slums of Chicago. The city still knocks down places that don't function, rather than encouraging people to stay and try and make it work. Why does no one try her ideas for encouraging the unslumming of slums? And if they have, why don't these ideas become more widespread? Why are people continuing to try to expand road space rather than focusing on the attrition of vehicles? The fact that after more than 40 years Mrs. Jacobs' ideas don't seem to have been sufficiently tested makes me sad.
Anyway, I strongly recommend this book, it's easy to understand and very interesting. Read it. Think about it.
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Summary: Changed the way I look at the city where I was born and live
Review: I first read this book about ten years ago, and it changed the way I look at and interact with New York (and other cities that I have visited since). This should be required reading for metropolitan dwellers as it gives a very logical framework for understanding how large cities are unique in their physical and sociological structure. Absolutely fascinating!
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Summary: A suggested movie to set the tone for the book
Review: I highly reccommend that anyone who reads this book download the movie "the dynamic city" (its free and legal) from the Prelinger Archives at archive.org - this video will show the reader the ideology in the urban planning world at the time this book was written and what Jane Jacobs showed us to be ineffective. A high speed connection would be best for the download.This is the best book I have read.
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Summary: A song review
Review: I think you can best describe Jane Jacobs' seminal book with a song by Cat Stevens: Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything. I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play? Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorryloads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems you can't get off. Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play? When you crack the sky, scrapers fill the air.
Will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die? I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?
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Summary: A landmark piece of work
Review: I've been reading a lot lately about urban planning, because after having moved to Silicon Valley I couldn't help but notice how different the place looked from the European cities that I was used to. My curiosity about why the place looks so different and barren was satisfied by reading Suburban Nation. But in the course of reading that, and a great many other books on the same subject, I couldn't help but notice dozens of citations from The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Now I can see why. It's hard to believe that something so insightful could have been written when it was, and that so much of the well-researched and well-argued material was ignored by the planners who went ahead with the malling and sprawling of the west.
Today I see the same mistakes being repeated in my own country, Ireland, where catering for the needs of the automobile at the expense of everything else is going ahead with the same indecent haste that it did in the USA all those years ago.
This book is very detailed and comprehensive, a lot more so than much of the more recent works on this very topic. It can be heavy reading at times though, Ms Jacobs does tend to talk about certain concepts in a general and abstract way and could use more examples to explain what she's saying, but if you concentrate hard enough you will find it well worth it.
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Summary: She said it first
Review: If we'd listened to Jane Jacobs in the first place, we wouldn't be confronting enormous problems with sprawl. "Smart growth," "the New Urbanism..." It's only Jane Jacobs re-packaged... How long it's taken us to understand her wisdom about cities and civilization.
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Summary: A masterpiece
Review: In our urban civilisation reaching thousands of years into history, not one definitive work has chronicled the workings of cities, one of mankind's greatest achievements, as well as Jane Jacobs' landmark 1961 saga of the travails and tribulations of the American city. The epic spans eras- from the foundations of the Garden City movement in the late 19th century to Jacobs' contemporary 1961. Through this time period she describes how the loathing of urbanism by planners and their subsequent divorce from the realm of public opinion gave rise to the forces of suburbanisation and destruction battering American cities of the mid-20th century. This lays the fundamental groundwork for Jacobs' criticism of contemporary planning methods, especially in her home of New York. Jacobs emanates thoughtful analysis on what works and what does not in regards to the massive projects envisaged and in many cases wrought upon the cityscape. But perhaps the heart of the book are the chapters in which Jacobs describes how a city works at its most ideal. She chooses only the most exemplary neighbourhoods, those which persevere and spite statistical analysis despite the conventional wisdom of planners. Her own Greenwich Village serves as the book's centrepiece, but Boston's North End and Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square are also featured prominently. Jacobs' arguments for the necessity of density, history, and, above all, diversity in all forms (architectural, street, human, retail, age) are as poignant as they are eloquent. Those pragmatists not immediately taken to heart by Jacobs' paen to urbanity take solace in her intimate and empirical knowledge of economics. Indeed, what makes Jacobs' book so revolutionary is that it does not follow from knowledge handed down by established theory or intellectualism, but from experience, observation, and wisdom, the foundation for her usurpment and subversion of the fallacious atrocities being waged against America's cities. Liberal at some points, libertarian at others, Jacobs' work must be comprehended not as a work of political ideology but of scientific method. Her opinions are based on but one bias- an innate love for the city. And all who wish to truly understand it in all its objectivity- its trials, mistakes, and triumphs, and her premonitions for our future, are urged to read this. For "Death and Life" is not merely historical perspective on a fleeting problem, but truly a prophecy as well.
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Summary: Descriptive, Informative, Essential, Analytical
Review: Jane Jacob's work has had many reverberations across the United States. The book, written nearly four decades ago, can be credited with helping start the protest and shift of policy makers from using Corbusian designs of urban redevelopment to more traditional rehabilitation, reuse, and revitalization methods to help reinvigorate cities. This book demonstrates the understated complexities and economies of city life, and how those complexities are very fragile and depend on the communication and interaction of people. Most importantly, it helps define community and how community, whether rich or poor, can overcome nearly all social ills and beat the statistics. An essential book for those who study sociology, economics, political science, psychology, architecture, urban planning, and general business
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Summary: This is my favorite nonfiction book, period
Review: Jane Jacobs is the metropolitan Thoreau. She makes her arguments about urban structure and its undeniable connection to social well-being seem like timeless explorations of the social urge itself. As a lifelong city-dweller, this book has really made me love my town, in all its messy glory.
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Summary: It's all true
Review: Jane Jacobs said most of what there is to say about how cities work back in the early 60's. City lovers (or dwellers, or leaders, or builders) ignore her at their own peril. Plus, her style is wonderful: charming and razor-sharp. A treasure to read and reread.
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