Learn about Cities the Easy Way!
Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a classic in urban development. 50+ years later it is still quoted in many articles about urban planning. This is part of a chapter by chapter summary of this 450+page book.
Introduction
In the introduction, Jane Jacobs covers her love for cities. She’s obviously frustrated with urban planners who judge a city primarily by its aesthetics. She points out the need to study the “Intrinsic social and economic order under the seeming disorder of cities.”
Throughout the 25 page introduction she laments that people take previous urban theories as truth and don’t try out and test things to see how they work. She uses the North End in Boston as an example. When she visited in 1959, the neighborhood was a thriving neighborhood. (It still is thriving although rather touristy.) However, in spite of its success, everyone thought it must need help because it was full of small apartment buildings with lots of short, crooked streets and parking lots. Even people who had visited the neighborhood and loved it, thought that it didn’t conform to the ideal city standards and needed to be improved upon.
Jacobs points out two examples of city design that she think has caused a lot of erroneous thinking. The first is the Garden City which she considers an alternative to cities, not a real city. The Garden City advocates big blocks, housing facing inwards and straight streets for cars. She gives the towns of Letchworth and Welwyn in the UK as examples as well as Radburn, NJ in the US. The second model is like a Garden City for cities, where the “whole city is a park” and high rises interrupt parks and there are roads for cars but the goal is to keep pedestrians in the park.
The book is 50+ years old. My copy still has a pocket for the library checkout card, but the book is still very relevant today and quoted by many experts in urban development.
The writing style is at times complicated while still being conversational. Here’s an example that I read to my 11 year old, “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.” Try reading that fast!
Jane Jacobs’ introduction sets the expectation that she believes current urban planning is based on unproven theories and she is going to show us how to truly observe what makes a great city great. I’m looking forward to it! If you would like to follow along, follow I ♥ Cities and hit the Clap icon below!
