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The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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This 1961 book by Jane Jacobs, a one-time writer for architectural magazines in New York City, turned the world of city planning on its head. The author, who possessed no formal training in architecture or city planning, relied on personal observations of her surroundings in Greenwich Village in New York City to supply ammunition for her charges against the grand muftis of the architectural profession. "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" consists mostly of common sense observations, but there is also a good amount of statistical information, economics, sociology, and some philosophy at the base of the author's arguments. This 1993 Modern Library reprint seeks to bring Jacobs's work to a whole new generation of readers, a necessity when one realizes that a majority of the problems plaguing cities in 1961 continue to be a problem today.

Jacobs begins her book with a brief history of where modern city planning came from. According to the author, the mess we call cities today emerged from Utopian visionaries from Europe and America beginning in the 19th century. Figures such as Ebenezer Howard, Lewis Mumford, Le Corbusier, and Daniel Burnham all had a significantly dreadful impact on how urban areas are built and rebuilt. These men all envisioned the city as a dreadful place, full of overcrowding, crime, disease, and ugliness. Howard wished to destroy big cities completely in order to replace them with small towns, or "Garden Cities," made up of small populations. Similar in thought to Howard, Mumford argued for a decentralization of cities into thinned out areas resembling towns. Le Corbusier, says Jacobs, inaugurated yet another harmful plan for cities: the "Radiant City." A radiant city consists of skyscrapers surrounded by wide swaths of parks where vast concentrations of people herded into one area could live and work. Burnham's contribution to planning was "City Monumental," where all of the grand buildings (libraries, government buildings, concert halls, landmarks) of a city could be clustered in one agglomeration separated from the dirty, bad city. Jacobs writes that all of these ideas continue to exert influence on the modern city, and that all of these ideas do not work.

For Jacobs, the key to a successful city rests on one word: diversity. This is not specifically an ethnic diversity, although Jacobs does vaguely include this in her arguments. Rather, diversity means different buildings, different residences, different businesses, and different amounts of people in an area at different times. The antithesis of diversity is what we see today on a stroll through downtown: a bland uniformity of office buildings, apartment dwellings, and houses that stretch as far the eyes can see. In the author's view, this lack of diversification leads to economic stagnation, slums, crime, and a host of other horrors that are all too familiar to viewers of the evening news. Especially egregious to Jacobs is the tendency to isolate low-income people in towering projects surrounded by empty space. The lack of embedded businesses in these areas, along with closed in hallways and elevators (which Jacobs calls "interior sidewalks and streets") creates a breeding ground for criminal elements and bad morale among the residents. Cities that work best employ a wide range of diverse interests that attract, not repel, people. Unfortunately, bureaucrats and social planners always believe top down planning is better than bottom up initiative. Jacobs tries to show the fallacy of social planning.

The amount of ground covered in this book is amazing. The author examines the role and practicality of parks, sidewalks, business interests, city government, streets, automobiles versus pedestrians, and boundaries. Repeatedly, Jacobs discovered fatal errors in how planners build cities. She found parks placed in the sunless shadows of skyscrapers or at the end of dead end streets, narrow sidewalks incapable of carrying heavy foot traffic, city blocks so long that people avoided walking down them, and city governments too fragmented to carry on effective management. All of these things eventually led to abandonment and degradation. Even worse, when a planned section of the city failed the planners came back and razed it to the ground in order to replace it with yet more failure.

One of Jacobs's failings in the book is that she never seems to make the connection between urban planning and social control. The housing projects are a great example. By isolating the poor, blacks as well as whites and other ethnic minorities, the state practices an effective control over these people's lives. This book inspired me to check into the fate of Cabrini-Green, Chicago's notorious housing projects that served as a role model for the abject uselessness of urban planning. These projects are in the process of being razed and replaced by mixed-income houses that, if Jacobs is accurate, may thrive due to the nearby presence of shopping areas and businesses. Of course, the planners are still in the game because they are sending most of the poor residents to other areas of the city.

I am probably not the best person to judge the merits of this book because I have never been to one of Jacobs's "Great Cities." I had difficulty imagining some of the layouts she mentioned in the book due to the simple fact that I have never seen them. Despite this small problem, there is still plenty of information in this book that does make perfect sense. You do not need to live in New York City or Philadelphia to recognize that parks with no sunlight will not be a big hit with the city denizens, or that older buildings are necessary to a neighborhood because they allow small businesses to exist with low overhead costs. "The Death and Life of Great Cities," despite its age, is still a relevant book well worth reading.

This is one of the books that made me realize what makes a city work and what makes it fail: Jacobs emphasizes that a healthy city neighborhood is created not by one "big box" destination like a convention center or a stadium, but by hundreds of little walkable destinations. Buffalo's downtown is a classic example: the Chippewa St. area (dominated by half a dozen little bars and coffeehouses) is relatively vibrant, while the areas near the convention center and stadium are dead, dead, dead. Similarly, in Cleveland the Warehouse District/Flats area (dominated by small, walkable businesses) are year-round destinations, while the areas surrounding the much-touted stadia and Rock Hall of Fame are utterly deserted after dark except on game days.

In response to the reviewer from N.H. who said Jacobs vindicates conservatism: I don't completely agree. Jacobs' work criticizes liberal reliance on big government housing/urban renewal projects, but is equally critical of big government highway projects that a lot of conservatives seem to like.

Even 35 years after it was written, The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains the classic book on how cities work and how urban planners and others have naively destroyed functioning cities. It is widely known for its incisive treatment of those who would tear down functioning neighborhoods and destroy the lives and livelihoods of people for the sake of a groundless but intellectually appealing daydream.

But although many see it as a polemic against urban planning, the best parts of it, the parts that have endeared it to many who love cities, are quite different. Death and Life is, first of all, a work of observation. The illustrations are all around us, she says, and we must go and look. She shows us parts of the city that are alive -- the streets, she says, are the city that we see, and it is the streets and sidewalks that carry the most weight -- and find the patterns that help us not merely see but understand. She shows us the city as an ecology -- a system of interactions that is more than merely the laying out of buildings as if they were a child's wooden blocks.

But observation can mean simply the noting of objects. Ms. Jacobs writes beautifully, lovingly, of New York City and other urban places. Her piece "The Ballet of Hudson Street" is both an observation of events on the Greenwich Village street where she lived and a prose poem describing the comings and goings of the people, the rhythms of the shopkeepers and the commuters and others who use the street.

In this day when "inner city" is a synonym for poverty and hopelessness, it is important to be reminded that cities are literally the centers of civilization, of business, of culture. This is just as true today as it was in the early 1960s when this was written. We in North America owe Jane Jacobs a great debt for her insight and her eloquence.

I owe Jane Jacobs a huge debt of gratitude. After reading her book I chose a home within walking distance of everything I needed. It was not in good shape, and I had to put money and sweat into getting it in shape. But she was right that suburbs are not sustainable and it was a terrible place to get stuck if the price of oil went up.

I have a community of friends I did not have in the suburbs and as the price of gas soars I don't have to move my car to get 90% of the things I need. Thank you Jane Jacobs, your work changed my life for the better.

One of the most insightful and thought provoking books I have ever read. Jane Jacobs' classic work on the functioning of cities, though published in 1961, offers a fresh look at our cities and how we choose to live.

Ms. Jacobs' insights grow out of two factors which combine make this an outstanding book. First, she approaches cities as living beings. True, cities are made of bricks and mortar but over time buildings, streets and neighborhoods change in response to the people who live and work in them. Secondly, she bases her conclusions on empirical experience. The author doesn't sit in some ivory tower, theorize how people should live and then expect people's actions to fit those theories. Rather, she observes daily life and from there draws her conclusions.

One item that hit closest to home for me was the book's examination of the effects of public housing. Growing up and living in the Chicago area I knew firsthand that the "projects" were not a desirable place to live. Built at the same time that The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes were promoted as an improvement to the community. Complete with large parcels of land allocated for parks and bulldozing what were considered "slums" the view at the time was that these projects would improve the vitality of the neighborhood. But, as Ms. Jacobs rightly observed back in 1961, instead of promoting community, projects such as these only set the scene for isolation and fear.

Time has proven this work to be a classic. Many of her observations went against the prevailing wisdom of the era when the book was published. But now, at the dawn of the 21st century, the Robert Taylor Homes face the wrecking ball and cities everywhere are heeding the wisdom in this book as they rethink their approaches toward urban development.

This is one of the fundamental books on the successful strcuturing of large cities. The ideas proesented here about the principles that will generate a liviable settlement are applicable to settlements of all sizes. Jacob shows how these principles can be met within the structure of large cities and how some of the convnetional designs of such cities hinder thme and create non-ideal living spaces.

The book is excellent. Unfortunalely however its solutions have been seiezed upon by zealots who try to fit Jacob's solutions for large cities to settlements of every size. Jacobs' ideas and name are used constantly in discussions on city planning. It would be better if the people bandying her ideas about would read her books. They might be surprised to find that theirs and her ideas about the role of government in city planning may be quite dissimilar.

I first heard of this book referenced in Steven Johnson's "Emergence". I asked a friend if he'd heard of it, and the next thing I knew, I was being sent home with his copy with an assignment !

I just couldn't put it down. This isn't some abstract theoretical snotty work by an academia - this is an inspired and thorough examination of what makes a neighborhood functional, and what destroys that functionality. So much of what Jane Jacobs has to say is so common-sensual, it makes you wonder how on earth the central planners managed to wrest so much authority and control from the public.

Her observations and critiques are even more relevant today, and most of her predictions have been born out since the initial puiblication of this work back in '61.

But what moved me the most about this book was Jane's amazing sharp ability to observe and document and understand what is going on in the street. Again, this is not a book written by some dead old intellectual that lives in an upscale, isolated neighborhood you and I will never live in. This is a book written by a woman who loves her home and her neighborhood and the people in it.

What makes a street safe ? What makes it unsafe ? What is the function of the sidewalk ? How do people use the street and the landmarks in their neighborhood ? What do major landmarks DO to a neighborhood ? The answers to these questions will probably surprise you.

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

Death and Life is a book about how and why cities work. Written in 1961, this astonishing classic is just as pertinent today as when it was written. Steve Johnson's argues in "Emergence" that Jacobs was years ahead of her time in analysing city suburbs in terms of the emergent behaviour of micro-interactions at the street level. It is how the users of a neighbourhood are permitted to interact by the street that dictate what kind of neighbourhood results.

The genesis of this book arose in part to Jacobs' own experience in preventing the razing of Greenwich Village, New York, into a series of housing projects. This kind of bottom-up thinking is complete anathema to city planners trained in top-down thinking. Indeed, Jacobs sharpens the knives for her one-time mentor Lewis Mumford and his idea of the Garden City, the intellectual model behind the hideous surburban sprawl of cities like Los Angeles and the crippling failures of low-income housing projects.

Why have lively city neighbourings in the first place? In short, people like other people, lots of them and in as many different varieties as possible. Don't be fooled by the engagingly informal prose, inside this book are immensely sophisticated pieces of sociological reasoning, eg the integral importance of strangers in neighbourhoods, the nature of safety on lively public streets, the function of privacy in cities as oposed to towns.

The book explains how lively city neighbourhoods are the engines of a city's economy, how slums are formed and more importantly, how slums can un-slum themselves. Jacobs argues that through this process of un-slumming "cities grow the middle class". If Jacobs is correct then neglecting the nurtue of lively city neighbourhoods is one of the greatest obstacles to eradicating poverty in our cities today.

After a thorough analysis of the life of cities using a plethora of concrete examples, four simple rules of thumb are given to liven city neighbourhoods - short city blocks, mixed pattern of usage, high density of people and lots of old buildings. Mystified? Well then, read the book and find out why for yourself. Then these rules will just seem like plain common-sense.

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.