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The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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Jacobs argued that urban planning should prioritize the needs and experiences of residents rather than modernist visions.[1] Writer and activist Jane Jacobs authored the 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which criticizes the urban planning approaches of the 1950s.[2] In 1962, the National Book Foundation selected Jacobs' book as a finalist in the Nonfiction category.[3][4]

Making and release

Jacobs learned about cities by observing and doing, writing articles in Fortune magazine during the 1950s that later formed the basis for this book.[5] The book begins with Jacobs' blunt statement that it is "an attack on current city planning and rebuilding"[6] She describes a 1959 trip to Boston's North End neighborhood, finding it friendly and vibrant despite elite planners calling it a "terrible slum"[6] Jacobs directed her most telling fire at Le Corbusier's concept of the "Radiant City" which underpinned urban renewal policies.[7]

She described four "generators of diversity": mixed primary uses, short blocks, buildings of various ages, and density.[8] Jacobs was against large-scale urban renewal initiatives that constructed highways through central city areas.[1]

What the cited sources add

Peter Dreier's account notes that the 1950s was the heyday of urban renewal, a federal program that sought to wipe out urban "blight" with the bulldozer.[5] Dreier states that Jacobs believed cities should be untidy, complex, and full of surprises, encouraging social interaction at the street level.[5] The National Book Foundation describes the work as a "direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment" of short-sightedness in urban planning.[4] According to Dreier, Jacobs was instrumental in the campaign that halted the construction of the Spadina Expressway, which would have sliced through her own Annex neighborhood.[5]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Zukin, "The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies", 2019, p. 1–5 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Jane Jacobs' Radical Legacy", Peter Dreier, Summer 2006; Douglas, "Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89", The New York Times, April 26, 2006 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", National Book Foundation (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", National Book Foundation. facts only, no text reused. nationalbook.org
  5. "Jane Jacobs' Radical Legacy", Peter Dreier, Summer 2006. facts only, no text reused. nhi.org
  6. Wikipedia, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Jacobs, "The Death and Life of American Cities", Random House, 1961, p. 3 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Ward, Stephen: Jane Jacobs: Critic of the modernist approach to urban planning who believed that cities were places for people in The Independent, 3 June 2006. facts only, no text reused. independent.co.uk
  8. Wikipedia, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: p. 151. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article The Death and Life of Great American Cities (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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