Customer Reviews

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES (PELICAN)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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The reviewer from New Hampshire blames big government for the decline of city neighborhoods [through urban renewal], yet in so many contemporary American cities the free market forces have taken entire districts [lower Manhattan being a classic case in point] and turned them into office tower farms, which are just as empty after dark as the urban renewal neighborhoods he despises.

Regardless, Jacobs' book is a great, non-partisan look at what makes American cities tick; it is indeed a must-read for city dwellers who want to stay involved in their own political processes and keep the cities they inhabit worth living in.

The significance of Jane Jacobs's book is really twofold. One reason is specific; it offers a devastating critique of urban planning. The other is more general; it lies in the degree to which this amateur's analysis calls into question the very concepts of bureaucratic expertise and centralized planning. On cities specifically, Jacobs was an early and prescient voice warning that what was being billed as urban renewal--big housing projects, highway building, creation of business districts, etc.--was actually destroying neighborhoods and creating more problems than it was solving. Subsequent events of the past forty years have certainly borne out her argument that the planners were killing cities. An apt companion piece for her book would be The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro, wherein the author demonstrates in detail that these plans came to be more about the exercise of power by the civil "servants" than about actually helping city dwellers. The high rise housing projects that blight our urban landscape stand as eloquent testimony to the fact that, regardless of their original intentions, the bureaucrats of the Great Society wasted billions of dollars pursuing disastrous policies and left only ruin in their wake.

Of course, Urban Renewal was just one aspect of the liberal do-gooders sustained assault on the poor families of our great cities. Similarly interventionist--and equally deleterious in their effect--were ideas like Welfare, the Sexual Revolution, and so on... The entire panoply of supposedly benevolent government programs of the post-Depression era all had presumably unintended, though entirely foreseeable, adverse consequences for their supposed beneficiaries. Jacobs' thesis is easily expanded, as indeed she has in successive books, to encompass all centralized government planning. The alternative vision she offers, of more organic development (basically allowing Free Market forces to function), is certainly the prevailing notion today, at least rhetorically. It is surely no coincidence that the rebirth of cities like New York has come about under the leadership of Republican mayors. But one need only look at New York's schools to realize that the bureaucrats are fighting a tenacious rearguard action. Virtually the entire book could be applied to today's education system.

One surefire sign that this book still strikes a nerve among the liberal elites is its inexcusable exclusion from the Modern Library Top 100 List. Of course, that list includes instead the insipid The City in History (1961) (Lewis Mumford 1895-1990)(see Orrin's review). Mumford's book is mostly self evident historical analysis, devoid of ideas. In sharp contrast, Jacobs' book is all idea, timeless ideas, and a slap in the face of the modern statists of the Left and the enormous hubris which convinces them that they should make our decisions for us.

One thing I especially love about books like Jacobs', is that they remind folks that conservatives aren't merely reactionaries--sniping at noble but misguided social policies only after they've failed--but actually foresaw the catastrophic effect that Big Government would have on our lives and warned against it at the time. On the other hand, it's kind of frightening how much of this book remains timely and germane today; but in recent years it does at least seem as if Jacobs' vision is finally winning. Let us hope so.

GRADE: A-

When one begins to talk about city planning and urban land use, the name Jane Jacobs almost always comes up in the conversation. Jacobs is without question the leading scholar attacking the modern urban theories of development. If you ask any average suburban soccer mom or dad what the problem is with the city, they almost always say "it is too crowded!"

Jacobs is able to show that the real problem with cities isn't overpopulation - rather, it is exactly the opposite! The major problem with cities today is that they aren't dense enough. Empty sidewalks are inviting only to criminals. Children, shop keepers, and families hate an empty sidewalk.

Furthermore, city planners compound the situation by moving businesses (and therefore commerce) away from residences - thus resulting in a further decline of sidewalk traffic.

If you're going to be involved in city government, planning, or land use, you should definitely read this book. I'm a small government conservative, and lots of other conservatives are scared by Jacobs -- but let me tell you -- this is the future of America. We should accept and embrace this urban challenge.

This book reads like a novel rather than an ideological tome. If you think of it that way, the city is the protagonist and you feel like you're reading a bildundgsroman about this much put upon but always fascinating central character. Wow. Somebody recommended a Modern Library edition. I have to concur because this edition (paperback) is badly designed and hard to read. It's worth getting a nicer edition.

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.

The first time I read Jane Jacobs opus to the city street, I was bowled over by what seemed to be just plain "common sense." However, a second reading had much less impact. Having since read Le Corbusier, Lewis Mumford and many other of the architects and critics whom she panned, I realized just how weak an analysis she provided. Jane provided a most cursory review of past urban planning ideas, undeseveredly raking Lewis Mumford over the coals when he too protested against many of the redevelopment projects slated for New York in the 1950's. In fact, what Jacobs does is go back to the early Modern planning ideas from the 1920's and 30's and leads readers to assume that the leading lights had not changed their views one iota since then. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, European Modernism took root in America after WWII with Walter Gropius heading the Harvard School of Design and Mies van der Rohe doing his signature works in Chicago and New York, but what happened to American cities in the 1950's was thoroughly American, and had roots going back to the 19th century industrial revolution. American cities were constantly being remade, very much like the image of America itself. The mid-rise and hi-rise housing complexes first put forward in the 20's were being seriously questioned by the architectural community in the 50's, but developers saw these buildings as expedient and profitable solutions to the ever-increasing demand for housing. The federal and city governments supported these projects in the war on poverty. Yet, it was poverty that saved many of the neighborhoods which Jacobs described, along with community action groups which fought against the razing of their neighborhoods in the name of progress.

What Jane Jacobs has done is simply collect a set of anecdotes and provide a "from the hip" commentary on Modern planning solutions, without any serious research into the subject. If she had taken a closer look, she would have seen how Le Corbusier's own ideas evolved greatly since he first extolled the industrial city, and how architects and planners, influenced by Le Corbusier's recent directions, were already calling for a more human scale in urban development. But, Ms. Jacobs wanted to shock the public and did so by pointing out the worst in Modernism, and holding up a handful of New York and Chicago neighborhoods as the models for sympathetic development. The book is badly dated with much finer work on the subject available through this bookstore.

This book should be required reading for all city planners, building contractors, Architects, and design professionals. It doesn't hurt to read it if you dwell in, or plan to dwell in any large city, either. Very little has become dated about it in the decades since it was written. It may not be the 'be all end all' of urban planning, but it is a foundation without which complete understanding cannot be achieved.

It would be perfect if there was a French translation available. If so I'd buy it without thinking twice!

Even if it's rather difficult to me to read in English I couldn't stop reading, this book is so fascinating.

This is a great book. I read it on the subway and never lost interest. Even today it helps open your eyes to bad planning that occurs in cities that kills what otherwise could be successful neighborhoods.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a genius book. Words cannot explain how powerful and convincing this book is, you have to buy it yourself to understand. Even at her elder age, Jacobs is still very involved in urban issues in the City of Toronto where she now resides, but even half way around the world people have been affected by her stance on issues surrounding cities, as many municipal politicians use The Death and Life... as their policy bible.