Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery

List Price: $19.00 Details

Save: $2.01 (11%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, September 20 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, September 19. Order within 21 hrs 31 mins

Select delivery location

$$16.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery September 27 - 29 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery September 25 - 28

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by Media Trading Inc

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$13.19
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: SuperBookDeals---

Added

Not added

$15.21
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Prime Deals, USA

Added

Not added

$21.39
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Cherry Creek Books

Follow the Author

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities Paperback – December 1, 1992

by Jane Jacobs (Author)

4.7 1,426 ratings

in Urban & Land Use Planning

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$14.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$18.86

$14.88

$12.96

Paperback

"Please retry"

$16.99

$12.52

$6.53

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$23.77

$11.43

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$16.99","priceAmount":16.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"wid0oFdzGl3I4oI9TW%2FkcKEKPDnt2bSCzba1QmfGtFESuan1Bi7GpkefLj6MAdIDWTPRHS8jQRaYexzt99tW2xeKElVC%2BvVOLts7AIgMgDeByU1KTlzajaK3orzwu4PWFTBiDdll1DA%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$10.86","priceAmount":10.86,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"86","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"wid0oFdzGl3I4oI9TW%2FkcKEKPDnt2bSCHp2VC8j4k14EGP1f0mmLaA4%2F2m%2BfvRwVHQWjnEzn1SlVM%2B%2BEr7s6Tx5D6tGafXuseSuylJKQR4My5JGfWnR%2BN2w8hS0PTZUkXCgZsmsQ28Kd0R3D7k7aPYBuH2IFOtzhb1U%2FTQoR%2BakuH6Edd8NaCQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and keenly detailed, a monumental work that provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.

"The most refreshing, provacative, stimulating and exciting study of this [great problem] which I have seen. It fairly crackles with bright honesty and common sense." —The New York Times

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.

Print length

458 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

December 1, 1992
Dimensions

5.18 x 0.88 x 8.01 inches
ISBN-10

067974195X
ISBN-13

978-0679741954
See all details

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Kevin Lynch
274
Paperback
31 offers from $14.97
Jeff Speck
18
Paperback
51 offers from $10.93
Charles L. Marohn Jr.
637
Hardcover
60 offers from $15.59
Charles Montgomery
985
Paperback
76 offers from $5.94
Elena Ferrante
29,508
Paperback
314 offers from $1.35
Charles Yu
997
Paperback
65 offers from $3.41

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most refreshing, provacative, stimulating and exciting study of this [great problem] which I have seen. It fairly crackles with bright honesty and common sense." —The New York Times

"Magnificent ... Describes with brilliant specificity what works and what doesn't in cities, in language that is fearless and crisp as a trumpet blast." —Rebecca Solnit

"Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning... Jacobs has a powerful sense of narrative, a lively wit, a talent for surprise and the ability to touch the emotions as well as the mind" —The New York Times Book Review

"One of the most remarkable books ever written about the city ... a primary work. The research apparatus is not pretentious—it is the eye and the heart—but it has given us a magnificent study of what gives life and spirit to the city." —William H. Whyte, author of The Organization Man

From the Inside Flap

A classic since its publication in 1961, this book is the defintive statement on American cities: what makes them safe, how they function, and why all too many official attempts at saving them have failed.

From the Back Cover

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the shortsightedness 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.

About the Author

JANE JACOBS was the legendary author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a work that has never gone out of print and that has transformed the disciplines of urban planning and city architecture. Her other major works include The Economy of Cities, Systems of Survival, The Nature of Economies and Dark Age Ahead. She died in 2006.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword to the Modern Library Edition

When I began work on this book in 1958, I expected merely to describe the civilizing and enjoyable services that good city street life casually provides-and to deplore planning fads and architectural fashions that were expunging these necessities and charms instead of helping to strengthen them. Some of Part One of this book: that's all I intended.

But learning and thinking about city streets and the trickiness of city parks launched me into an unexpected treasure hunt. I quickly found that the valuables in plain sight-streets and parks-were intimately mingled with clues and keys to other peculiarities of cities. Thus one discovery led to another, then another--.Some of the findings from the hunt fill the rest of this book. Others, as they turned up, have gone into four further books. Obviously, this book exerted an influence on me, and lured me into my subsequent life's work. But has it been influential otherwise? My own appraisal is yes and no.

Some people prefer doing their workaday errands on foot, or feel they would like to if they lived in a place where they could. Other people prefer hopping into the car to do errands, or would like to if they had a car. In the old days, before automobiles, some people liked ordering up carriages or sedan chairs and many wished they could. But as we know from novels, biographies, and legends, some people whose social positions required them to ride-except for rural rambles-wistfully peered out at passing street scenes and longed to participate in their camaraderie, bustle, and promises of surprise and adventure.

In a kind of shorthand, we can speak of foot people and car people. This book was instantly understood by foot people, both actual and wishful. They recognized that what it said jibed with their own enjoyment, concerns, and experiences, which is hardly surprising, since much of the book's information came from observing and listening to foot people. They were collaborators in the research. Then, reciprocally, the book collaborated with foot people by giving legitimacy to what they already knew for themselves. Experts of the time did not respect what foot people knew and valued. They were deemed old-fashioned and selfish-troublesome sand in the wheels of progress. It is not easy for uncredentialed people to stand up to the credentialed, even when the so-called expertise is grounded in ignorance and folly. This book turned out to be helpful ammunition against such experts. But it is less accurate to call this effect "influence" than to see it as corroboration and collaboration. Conversely, the book neither collaborated with car people nor had an influence on them. It still does not, as far as I can see.

The case of students of city planning and architecture is similarly mixed, but with special oddities. At the time of the book's publication, no matter whether the students were foot or car people by experience and temperament, they were being rigorously trained as anti-city and anti-street designers and planners: trained as if they were fanatic car people and so was everybody else. Their teachers had been trained or indoctrinated that way too. So in effect, the whole establishment concerned with the physical form of cities (including bankers, developers, and politicians who had assimilated the planning and architectural visions and theories) acted as gatekeepers protecting forms and visions inimical to city life. However, among architectural students especially, and to some extent among planning students, there were foot people. To them, the book made sense. Their teachers (though not all) tended to consider it trash or "bitter, coffee-house rambling" as one planner put it. Yet the book, curiously enough, found its way onto required or optional reading lists-sometimes, I suspect, to arm students with awareness of the benighted ideas they would be up against as practitioners. Indeed, one university teacher told me just that. But for foot people among students, the book was subversive. Of course their subversion was by no means all my doing. Other authors and researchers-notably William H. Whyte-were also exposing the unworkability and joylessness of anti-city visions. In London, editors and writers of The Architectural Review were already up to the same thing in the mid-1950s.

Nowadays, many architects, and some among the younger generation of planners, have excellent ideas-beautiful, ingenious ideas-for strengthening city life. They also have the skills to carry out their plans. These people are a far cry from the ruthless, heedless city manipulators I have castigated.

But here we come to something sad. Although the numbers of arrogant old gatekeepers have dwindled with time, the gates themselves are another matter. Anti-city planning remains amazingly sturdy in American cities. It is still embodied in thousands of regulations, bylaws, and codes, also in bureaucratic timidities owing to accepted practices, and in unexamined public attitudes hardened by time. Thus, one may be sure that there have been enormous and dedicated efforts in the face of these obstacles wherever one sees stretches of old city buildings that have been usefully recycled for new and different purposes; wherever sidewalks have been widened and vehicular roadways narrowed precisely where they should be-on streets in which pedestrian traffic is bustling and plentiful; wherever downtowns are not deserted after their offices close; wherever new, fine-grained mixtures of street uses have been fostered successfully; wherever new buildings have been sensitively inserted among old ones to knit up holes and tatters in a city neighborhood so that the mending is all but invisible. Some foreign cities have become pretty good at these feats. But to try to accomplish such sensible things in America is a daunting ordeal at best, and often enough heartbreaking.

In Chapter Twenty of this book I proposed that the ground levels of self-isolating projects within cities could be radically erased and reconstituted with two objects in view: linking the projects into the normal city by fitting them out with plentiful, new, connecting streets; and converting the projects themselves into urban places at the same time, by adding diverse new facilities along those added streets. The catch here, of course, is that new commercial facilities would need to work out economically, as a measure of their genuine and not fake usefulness.

It is disappointing that this sort of radical replanning has not been tried-as far as I know-in the more than thirty years since this book was published. To be sure, with every decade that passes, the task of carrying out the proposal would seem to be more difficult. That is because anti-city projects, especially massive public housing projects, tend to cause their city surroundings to deteriorate, so that as time passes, less and less healthy adjoining city is available to tie into.

Even so, good opportunities still exist for converting city projects into city. Easy ones ought to be tried first on the premise that this is a learning challenge, and it is good policy for all learning to start with easy cases and work up to more difficult ones. The time is coming when we will sorely need to apply this learning to suburban sprawls since it is unlikely we can continue extending them without limit. The costs in energy waste, infrastructure waste, and land waste are too high. Yet if already existing sprawls are intensified, in favor of thriftier use of resources, we need to have learned how to make the intensifications and linkages attractive, enjoyable, safe, and sustainable-for foot people as well as car people.

Occasionally this book has been credited with having helped halt urban-renewal and slum-clearance programs. I would be delighted to take credit if this were true. It isn't. Urban renewal and slum clearance succumbed to their own failures and fiascos, after continuing with their extravagant outrages for many years after this book was published. Even now they pop up when wishful thinking and forgetfulness set in, abetted by sufficient cataclysmic money lent to developers and sufficient political hubris and public subsidies. A recent example, for instance, is the grandiose but bankrupt Canary Wharf project set in isolation in what were London's dilapidated docklands and the demolished, modest Isle of Dogs community, beloved by its inhabitants.

To return to the treasure hunt that began with the streets and one thing leading to another and another: at some point along the trail I realized I was engaged in studying the ecology of cities. Offhand, this sounds like taking note that raccoons nourish themselves from city backyard gardens and garbage bags (in my own city they do, sometimes even downtown), that hawks can possibly reduce pigeon populations among skyscrapers, and so on. But by city ecology I mean something different from, yet similar to, natural ecology as students of wilderness address the subject. A natural ecosystem is defined as "composed of physical-chemical-biological processes active within a space-time unit of any magnitude." A city ecosystem is composed of physical-economic-ethical processes active at a given time within a city and its close dependencies. I've made up this definition, by analogy.

The two sorts of ecosystems-one created by nature, the other by human beings-have fundamental principles in common. For instance, both types of ecosystems-assuming they are not barren-require much diversity to sustain themselves. In both cases, the diversity develops organically over time, and the varied components are interdependent in complex ways. The more niches for diversity of life and livelihoods in either kind of ecosystem, the greater its carrying capacity for life. In both types of ecosystems, many small and obscure components-easily overlooked by superficial observation can be vital to the whole, far out of proportion to their own tininess of scale or aggregate quantities. In natural ecosystems, gene pools are fundamental treasures. In city ecosystems, kinds of work are fundamental treasures; furthermore, forms of work not only reproduce themselves in newly created proliferating organizations, they also hybridize, and even mutate into unprecedented kinds of work. And because of their complex interdependencies of components, both kinds of ecosystems are vulnerable and fragile, easily disrupted or destroyed.

If not fatally disrupted, however, they are tough and resilient. And when their processes are working well, ecosystems appear stable. But in a profound sense, the stability is an illusion. As a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, observed long ago, everything in the natural world is in flux. When we suppose we see static situations, we actually see processes of beginning and processes of ending occurring simultaneously. Nothing is static. It is the same with cities. Thus, to investigate either natural or city ecosystems demands the same kind of thinking. It does not do to focus on "things" and expect them to explain much in themselves. Processes are always of the essence; things have significances as participants in processes, for better or worse.

This way of seeing is fairly young and new, which is perhaps why the hunt for knowledge to understand either natural or city ecology seems so inexhaustible. Little is known; so much yet to know.

We human beings are the only city-building creatures in the world. The hives of social insects are fundamentally different in how they develop, what they do, and their potentialities. Cities are in a sense natural ecosystems too-for us. They are not disposable. Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon; they have pulled their weight and more. It is the same still. Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.

It is urgent that human beings understand as much as we can about city ecology-starting at any point in city processes. The humble, vital services performed by grace of good city streets and neighborhoods are probably as good a starting point as any. So I find it heartening that The Modem Library is issuing this beautiful new edition for a new generation of readers who, I hope, will become interested in city ecology, respect its marvels, discover more.

Jane Jacobs
Toronto, Canada October 1992

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reissue edition (December 1, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 458 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 067974195X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679741954
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.18 x 0.88 x 8.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Urban & Land Use Planning (Books)
- #5 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #11 in Human Geography (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 1,426 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jane Jacobs

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

1,426 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

About Our Cities

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

She starts with the sidewalk. The sidewalk, after all, is where we live most of our lives if we live in a city. It’s where we walk, where kids play, where people congregate and look out for one another—whether they know they are doing it or not. She tells anecdotes—the one about the boy who was rescued by strangers on the sidewalk and the one about the boy trapped in an elevator in a project who cried and cried for hours but no-one came. The sidewalk, where people take responsibility for one another; where a community is formed; where we know our local grocer and that annoying lady next door is far safer than the projects where people—anonymous individuals—live cheek by jowl with their neighbors.

And from the point of view of the humble sidewalk, Jane Jacobs builds a kind of theory of cities: what works and what doesn’t. She makes points that, once she makes them, are nothing more nor less than common sense. She points out that we like interesting things and that what we, as people are most interested in, is other people. So we like to people-watching. And that means we need different, truly different, buildings on our sidewalks. It just doesn’t work to have a part of the city that’s all “about culture” and another part that’s all “about business” and yet a third that’s “all about” housing. We don’t live our lives like that and we should not expect our city to live if every aspect of human life is segregated from every other aspect.

It’s fine—no, it’s healthy—if people live next to a culture center, next to a place of worship, next to a place of business, and next to a park and playground. It means that at all times of the day, every day of the week, you will see different and interesting people on your streets. Sundays, you will see families dressed for church (and teenagers dressed “specially” for church); during the day on weekdays, you will see people in their business attire hurrying to and fro with their important tasks; at lunchtime you will see mothers (and these days increasingly fathers) pushing their baby strollers in the park and at night everyone gathers at the local watering holes and restaurants. If that is what you see where you live, you live in a safe and good neighborhood. A neighborhood where buildings are different not just because they have different paint but because they serve different functions. And that neighborhood is great for business. A baker, a coffee shop, a pub, a bar, a shoe repair shop—all will flourish in a neighborhood like this.

The way to destroy a city, on the other hand, is to destroy a neighborhood by transplanting it into a project. It doesn’t matter how poor that neighborhood is. There are people who live in that place who are genuinely attached to it. A famous story is told (not in this book but as an example) of the Mother of all the Rothschilds not wishing to leave the Jewish Ghetto in Vienna. That is where her friends were and that is where she wanted to live. And no matter how poor a place seems to an outsider, people do put down roots there. And those roots mean that they, the people who are attached to that place, can make it into a thriving, interesting neighborhood. Just like (or even better than) the one I described just now. All they need is a little help: loans from banks to start a business, short blocks, encouraging the kinds of uses the people want. If there is one thing Jane Jacobs is adamant about it’s that a city is about the people who live in it and so you can’t impose a great idea on them-no matter who they are—it has to come from within the community. Because only then will you have a community. And given half a chance, that community will grow and will prosper.

All that, and more, is in this relatively slim (for an urban planning book) volume. A volume that has been (rightly I think) been called a classic. Not just because of its message which is just as relevant today as it was when Jane Jacobs wrote it but because of the writing style. Jane Jacobs is obviously well-read and well-traveled but she does not feel the need t showcase that she read a book or two once. She writes in simple, easy-to-read prose and the lessons she teaches the reader are all the more memorable for that.

I highly recommend it.

74 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jacqueline Rainers

My son likes it

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023

Verified Purchase

My son is a college student and he loves this

Helpful

Rebecca

The muzaking of American cities

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2015

Verified Purchase

Everyone has opinions about their city and the different neighborhoods. Some areas are vibrant and energy giving, while others are so dreary they knock the wind out of you. Often the reasons seem clear and you just wish you could find the nincompoops responsible and make them spend the rest of their lives living in their creation. But other times you know you don't like it but the reasons are a little more nebulous. Jane Jacobs is able to quickly and expertly delineate it all in this wonderful book. You will look at cities with a new expert eye.

This topic could be really tedious to read - but it's not! Within the first few pages I could tell I was in the hands of someone skilled and capable, a master at the nature of spaces and nimble with words and ideas. Jacobs was not a planner, nor an academic but a person who had been thinking and writing about architecture and cities for a long time with intelligence and with an equal gift in communicating. Her style is evocative and able to tease out subtle ideas in amusing, succinct and yet on-the-mark ways. She just nails it each time.

Published in 1961 but for the most part, reads current. Her words, her thinking and writing are all contemporary, as even the older issues she discusses are now being deconstructed and it is interesting to read the origins of many of these ideas which seem like such obvious blunders you just scratch your head at the powers-that-were who conceived them. As she puts it, "expressways that eviscerate great cities...These amputated areas typically develop galloping gangrene" and the "Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore."

"Monopolistic shopping centers and monumental cultural centers cloak, under the public relations hoohaw, the subtraction of commerce, and of culture too." Or one of my pet peeves, "Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders" - these seem prevalent around civic centers and drive me crazy as I walk for my transportation, the long expanses of concrete and lawn with a few concrete benches. In Paris they would put a little outdoor cafe and some trees in the middle so that one can cross that desert with an espresso pit-stop but too often there is nothing, and one starts across the huge block already fatigued wondering how it is possible that even the green of the lawn looks unappealing, that nature is devoid of its charm in these circumstances. That's not to say that Europe avoided these problems, they built tons of social housing or offices. I see examples of them every day where I live, in the middle of a vibrant city suddenly one comes upon a 1970s "super-block" with a few high rises planted in the middle of a vast patchwork of concrete and never-used lawn and bits of graffiti on lonely concrete benches. Walking these super-blocks feels like being plunged into jello, heavy, plodding and onerous. But now I understand there was thoughtful thinking behind these but like lots of theories, things just didn't work out as they hoped or were anemic budgeted and bureaucratized versions of the original vision.

Thankfully, most cities are striving to be more livable now, it's too bad that a new problem has emerged, that they are losing diversity as they become unaffordable. She also goes into the suburbs, which along with small towns, now often seem to be the new repositories of those with no choice. Enough rant. She actually spends a lot of time talking about what is good, what works and why and that too is illuminating. You know you love these things about certain neighborhoods but you don't quite know all the reasons why, why exactly it feels more vibrant, alive, organic and a place where life can bloom.

This is eminently relevant and readable. Another review complained about her use of language made it hard to follow. She is really descriptive, perhaps that could get tedious if read straight through, it's a good book to have at the bedside to read in chunks.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Phil in Buckden

City Planning for real people..

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2017

Verified Purchase

I bought this book as someone with an amateur interest in town planning and architecture, following a documentary about the author, Jane Jacobs, on BBC4. Jane Jacobs successfully campaigned against uninspired city developments in North America during the mid 20th century. Her book sets out some rules and guidelines as to what constitutes a successful mix of factors required for a thriving city. Note that by City she means the large, North American metropolis of the 1950's and 60's so the examples she gives are not always understood by me (ie someone in the UK in the early 21st century), and her conclusions may not be wholly appropriate especially in this internet age (there's a lot about shops which of course have their own challenges in the digital age). She is damning of the Garden City movement which I thought was unfair given that Welwyn Garden City and the like in the UK - at least the original parts - seem to work and are still popular. I can only assume that she'd consider these towns not cities and is looking at a different beast Stateside.

The book makes some common sense points about the need for town planning being co-ordinated to enable people to breathe life into their surroundings, and comes to some withering conclusions about the impact of arbitrarily redeveloping "slum" areas. Her points about the need for green spaces and parks to be carefully planned and not just dropped into an area as a tick box exercise were particularly eye opening to me.
I understand this tome is a considered a reference benchmark for city planning. I read in a Times review of a recent Richard Roger's book, that Rogers has major respect for Jane Jacobs' book.

The only reason I haven't given this 5 stars is because the book was written in 1961 so inevitably some of the examples and potentially the conclusions, may not be entirely appropriate...but the principles hold good. A seemingly minor point but I'll mention it anyway; the print of the book is a fairly cheap job and the typeface isn't to my mind the easiest to read.

3 people found this helpful

Alaska Bouvet

Should read if you interested in city planning

Reviewed in Sweden on March 11, 2023

Verified Purchase

Just a classic!

Bernhard Kockoth

60 years after .. this book is about human living in cities, many aspects still valid

Reviewed in Germany on November 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

Now that at least here in Europe we're working hard to get our cities back from the car cult of the post-war era, this book helps to understand many of the past wrongdoings. Nice to see how little (western) humanity has changed over the years, it would be interesting to see how the findings fit with the asian part of humanity.

Opinionholder

A must-read sociological masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

A wonderful book, rightly regarded as a classic, that will challenge your perceptions of out urban space and how we use it.Although it relates specifically to America, the ideas do transfer to a UK context. Jacobs' challenges many ideas that were gaining traction mid century- and makes claims that ring true yet still seem controversial. for example, she asks planners to guard against the idea of building dedicated play parks, and instead ensure the streets are wide enough to accommodate children's play. She's on to something- children are far safer playing in full view of their communities rather than in the fenced-in, isolated 'park' that is so common place both in private and publich housing developments. Highly recommended to all with an interest in community, architecture and sociology.

5 people found this helpful

Alexander Paul

Absolutes Muss für alle Akteure im Städte- und Wohnungsbau

Reviewed in Germany on December 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Das Standardwerk für eine aufgeklärte Stadtplanung. Der Fokus liegt auf der amerikanischen Situation, aber viele Details sind auch auf übrige Regionen übertragbar. Wenn auch die Kritik an moderner Stadtplanung aus heutiger Sicht etwas überzogen scheint, so erstaunt die Aktualität der angesprochenen Probleme bis hin zur fehlerhaften Finanzierung von sozialem Wohnungsbau. Daher ist dieses Werk für alle Akteure im Städte- und Wohnungsbau auch heute noch ein absolutes Muss.

Translate review to English

See more reviews