Jane Jacobs

Cincuenta años después de su publicación, Muerte y vida de las grandes ciudades es, según el New York Times, «probablemente el libro más influyente en la historia de la planificación urbana». Jane Ja

Jane Jacobs is the kind of writer who produces in her readers such changed ways of looking at the world that she becomes an oracle, or final authority. The New York SunHailed by the New York Times Book Review as perhaps the single most influential work in the history of town planning, Jane Jacobss The Death and Life of Great American Cities was instantly recognized as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1961. In the decades that followed, Jacobs remained a brilliant and revered commentator on architecture, urban life, and economics until her death in 2006. These interviews capture Jacobs at her very best and are an essential reminder of why Jacobs wasand remainsunrivaled in her analyses and her ability to cut through cant and received wisdom.

Jane Jacobs, writing from her adoptive country, uses the problems facing an independence-seeking Quebec and Canada as a whole to examine the universal problem of sovereignty and autonomy that nations great and small have struggled with throughout history. Using Norways relatively peaceful divorce from Sweden as an example, Jacobs contends that Canada and CanadiansQuebecois and Anglophones alikecan learn important lessons from similar sovereignty questions of the past.

A career-spanning selection of previously uncollected writings and talks by the legendary author and activist No one did more to change how we look at cities than Jane Jacobs, the visionary urbanist and economic thinkerwhose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities started a global conversation that remains profoundly relevant more than half a century later.Vital Little Plans is an essential companion to Death and Life and Jacobss other books on urbanism, economics, politics, and ethics. It offers readers a unique survey of her entire career in forty short pieces that have never been collected in a single volume, from charming and incisive urban vignettes from the 1930s to the raw materials of her two unfinished books of the 2000s, together with introductions and annotations by editors Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring. Readers will find classics here, including Jacobss breakout article Downtown Is for People, as well as lesser-known gems like her speech at the inaugural Earth Day and a host of other rare or previously unavailable essays, articles, speeches, interviews, and lectures. Some pieces shed light on the development of her most famous insights, while others explore topics rarely dissected in her major works, from globalization to feminism to universal health care. With this book, published in Jacobss centenary year, contemporary readerswhether well versed in her ideas or new to her writingare finally able to appreciate the full scope of her remarkable voice and vision. At a time when urban life is booming and people all over the world are moving to cities, the words of Jane Jacobs have never been more significant. Vital Little Plans weaves a lifetime of ideas from the most prominent urbanist of the twentieth century into a book thats indispensable to life in the twenty-first.Praise for Vital Little PlansJacobss work . . . was a singularly accurate prediction of the future we live in.The New RepublicIn Vital Little Plans, a new collection of the short writings and speeches of Jane Jacobs, one of the most influential thinkers on the built environment, editors Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring have done readers a great service.TheHuffington Post A wonderful new anthology that captures [Jacobss] confident prose and her empathetic, patient eye for the way humans live and work together.The Globe and Mail[A timely reminder] of the clarity and originality of [Jane Jacobss] thought.Toronto Star [Vital Little Plans] comes to the foreground for [Jane Jacobss] centennial, and in a time when more of Jacobss prescient wisdom is needed.Metropolis[Jacobs] changed the debate on urban planning. . . . As [Vital Little Plans] shows, she never stopped refining her observations about how cities thrived.Minneapolis Star Tribune[Jane Jacobs] was one of three people I have met in a lifetime of meeting people who had an aura of sainthood about them. . . . The ability to radiate certainty without condescension, to be both very sure and very simple, is a potent one, and witnessing it in life explains a lot in history that might otherwise be inexplicable.Adam Gopnik, The New Yorke......

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusiers Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid scientific plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually works on the ground. The real vitality of cities, argues Jacobs, lies in their diversity, architectural variety, teeming street life and human scale. It is only when we appreciate such fundamental realities that we can hope to create cities that are safe, interesting and economically viable, as well as places that people want to live in.Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning... Jacobs has a powerful sense of narrative, a lively wit, a talent for surprise and the ability to touch the emotions as well as the mindNew York Times Book Review

With intelligence and clarity of observation, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities addresses the moral values that underpin working life. In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromesone governing commerce, the other, politicsand explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, governments overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice. In this work of profound insight and elegance, Jacobs gives us a new way of seeing all our public transactions and encourages us towards the best use of our natural inclinations.

Com um texto muito envolvente, Jane Jacobs escreve sobre o que torna as ruas seguras ou inseguras; sobre o que vem a ser um bairro e sua função dentro do complexo organismo que é a cidade; sobre os m

In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, were at risk of cultural collapse. Jacobsrenowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Citiespinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Drawing on a vast frame of referencefrom fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Irelands cultural rebirthJacobs suggests how the cycles of decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs career, but one of the most important works of our time.

From the revered author of the classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities comes a new book that will revolutionize the way we think about the economy.Starting from the premise that human beings "exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect," Jane Jacobs has focused her singular eye on the natural world in order to discover the fundamental models for a vibrant economy. The lessons she discloses come from fields as diverse as ecology, evolution, and cell biology. Written in the form of a Platonic dialogue among five fictional characters, The Nature of Economies is as astonishingly accessible and clear as it is irrepressibly brilliant and wisea groundbreaking yet humane study destined to become another world-altering classic.

Cincuenta años después de su publicación, Muerte y vida de las grandes ciudades es, según el New York Times, "probablemente el libro más influyente en la historia de la planificación urbana". Jane Jacobs, columnista y critica de arquitectura de principios de los años sesenta, afirmaba que la diversidad y la vitalidad de las ciudades estaban siendo destruidas por algunos arquitectos y urbanistas muy influyentes.Popular no solo entre profesionales, el libro es una fuerte critica de las politicas de renovacion urbanistica de los años cincuenta, que destruian comunidades y creaban espacios urbanos aislados y antinaturales. Jacobs defiende la abolicion de los reglamentos de ordenacion territorial y el restablecimiento de mercados libres de tierra, lo que daria como resultado barrios densos y de uso mixto. Frecuentemente cita el Greenwich Village neoyorkino como ejemplo de una comunidad urbana dinamica. Riguroso, lucido y deliciosamente epigramatico, Muerte y vida es un programa para la gestion humanista de las ciudades. Sensato, documentado, ameno e indispensable.

In this book, Jane Jacobs, building on the work of her debut, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, investigates the delicate way cities balance the interplay between the domestic production of goods and the ever-changing tide of imports. Using case studies of developing cities in the ancient, pre-agricultural world, and contemporary cities on the decline, like the financially irresponsible New York City of the mid-sixties, Jacobs identifies the main drivers of urban prosperity and growth, often via counterintuitive and revelatory lessons.

In this eye-opening work of economic theory, Jane Jacobs argues that it is citiesnot nationsthat are the drivers of wealth. Challenging centuries of economic orthodoxy, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations the beloved author contends that healthy cities are constantly evolving to replace imported goods with locally-produced alternatives, spurring a cycle of vibrant economic growth. Intelligently argued and drawing on examples from around the world and across the ages, here Jacobs radically changes the way we view our citiesand our entire economy.

Desde la publicación en 1961 de su obra mítica Muerte y vida de las grandes ciudades, el respeto y la fascinación por la mirada lúcida e incisiva de Jane Jacobs acompañó para siempre a la intelectual norteamericana. Este libro recoge cuatro entrevistas, ineditas en castellano, en las que descubrimos la cara mas humana y vivencial de Jacobs: desde los años de precariedad laboral, el descubrimiento de la metropolis o sus paseos aleatorios y sin rumbo por el Manhattan de la decada de 1930, hasta su incursion en el activismo politico y sus reflexiones mas afiladas contra la planificacion urbana y los grandes dogmas de la modernidad. Una lectura imprescindible de una de las grandes voces del siglo xx.