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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
With its thorough chronicling of building heights, tree spacing, relative widths of streets, sidewalks and cartways, this book will undoubtedly serve as a welcome reference tool for designers and urban planners. But for the lay reader, it is also an oddly poetic attempt to capture the undefinable quality that makes a street truly "great." To make his point, Jacobs, chair of the department of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, uses text and 242 graceful line drawings to explore the magic of some 15 great streets, most of them European, including Barcelona's Ramblas, the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris, Via dei Giubbonari in Rome and even Venice's Grand Canal. Other well- and lesser-known examples appear in a second section comparing types of streets--boulevards, commercial strips, small-town main streets and residential roads. Finally, Jacobs analyzes those factors that make streets great: buildings of similar height, interesting facades, trees, windows that invite viewing, intersections, beginnings and endings, stopping places and, to be sure, space for leisurely walking. These are necessary qualities, but, as Jacobs warns, do not ensure a great street. "A final ingredient--perhaps the most important--is necessary . . . the magic of design."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Jacobs presents an insightful, richly illustrated compendium of the best examples of streets from all over the world. The streets, both ancient and modern, are analyzed and presented as an instructional sourcebook for the architect, urban planner, and civic-minded reader. Jacobs (city & regional planning, Univ. of California, Berkeley) devotes the first part of the book to 15 of the finest manifestations, ranging from European medieval streets to the grand boulevards of Paris; from the network of finely scaled streets of Bath, England, to Richmond's (Va.) Monument Avenue, a tree-lined residential thoroughfare punctuated with fine civic sculpture. Examples are presented in plain-language text and rich line drawings, supplemented by street plans and sections all drawn to the same scale. One chapter, illustrating one-square-mile maps of street patterns in 50 cities, offers a fascinating comparison of urban fabric literally from Ahmedabad to Zurich. Recommended for architecture and urban planning collections.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Walking in Thought,
By William J. Hamilton, III (I'On Village, Mt. Pleasant, SC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Great Streets (Paperback)
This wonderful book consideres the civic street from many perspecitives and describes it with poetic attention. The author has spent days on these great streets and brings careful measurement and observation to his carefully crafted text. If everyone planning streets and highways in America read this book and visited one of two of these great streets, it would enable a huge improvement.This book studies the street not from the simple American perspecitve of high velocity traffic sewar, but from the realities of a place to hang out. eat lunch, shop, socialize, people watch, court, celebrate and be. The read how these places work in this book is to realize how much our desperate focus on the automobile costs us. Buy this book and photocopy some of its illustrations for your next public hearing on town planning.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
essential to any urban planner or architect,
This review is from: Great Streets (Paperback)
This book showcases some of the greatest streets in the world. Not only does it provide examples of great streets but it speaks about the criteria of being "great". The drawings are very nice as well, and this book would make a great addition to any architect, planner or travel enthusiasts' library.
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you're an Urban Planner or a World Traveler...,
By
This review is from: Great Streets (Paperback)
...this is a reference book in the sense that it mentions so many important and peculiar streets in the world, many of which, I'm sure, you've heard about or possibly even visited. Mr. Jacobs' accounts of his own travels and his feelings while strolling down those streets could even put this book in the travel journal caegory, complete with beautiful sketches by the author himself. Not only the sketches, but the technical and historical information, (like street dimensions, the schematic comparison of several different city plans worlwide and the decline of once great streets) establish this book as a constant source of information for Architects and Urban Planners, as well as students. I could clearly recognize the Traveler, the Urban Scholar and the Artist in Mr. Jacobs as I took a stroll down these great streets through the drawings and heartfelt passages of his book.
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