Book Recommendation

Welcome to the greatest young planner book review page! Here we'll scourer the interweb in search of the best books out there and what better way to start off with one of the seminal books that changed the way people view cities, none other than Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of Great American Cities".

"Death and Life of Great American Cities" 
By Jane Jacobs

Jacobs challenged conventional modern city planning and city architectural design. In the opening sentence, Jacobs declares war on the major schools of urban planning:

“This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those now taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday supplements and women’s magazines.”

Conventional planning, she noticed, did not seem to create vibrant, livable neighborhoods but rather killed whatever good had once been present. Looking into how cities actually work, rather than how they should work according to urban designers and planners, Jacobs effectively describes the real factors affecting cities, and recommends strategies to enhance actual city performance.

"Death and Life" made four recommendations for creating municipal diversity:

1. A street or district must serve several primary functions.

2. Blocks must be short.

3. Buildings must vary in age, condition, use and rentals.

4. Population must be dense.

These seemingly simple notions represented a major rethinking of modern planning. They were coupled with fierce condemnations of the writings of the planners Sir Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer Howard, as well as those of the architect Le Corbusier and Lewis Mumford, who championed their ideal of graceful towers rising over exquisite open spaces.

Some critics, a few of whom had an axe to grind, such as Mumford, the eminent critic and social historian, wrote the following reply in a New Yorker article: "Like a construction gang bulldozing a site clean of all habitations, good or bad, she bulldozes out of existence every desirable innovation in urban planning during the last century, and every competing idea, without even a pretense of critical evaluation."

The book achieved a remarkably wide readership, perhaps because it's such a rare joy to read a book about cities written by someone who actually seems to appreciate what makes them fun to live in. Planners began to think about networks rather than grids; to whisper about pedestrians rather than motorists; to talk openly about urban infill rather than suburban sprawl; to speak out boldly on behalf of mixed-use buildings and diverse, self-governing neighbourhoods.

Jacobs’ ideas have been the foundation for the New Urbanism movement in an effort to promote social interaction by incorporating such Jacobean features as ground-floor retail in suburban developments.

You can get the 50^th anniversary edition on amazon for a mere 17.60 clamshells!! LINK