The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Reading this book is so depressing. The author pointed out the flaws in the suburban planning more than a half century ago. And what has happened since then? Most of the US has been developed with the same bad planning. Central planning. Parking lots. Separation of concerns. Now there has finally been a little bit of observation that some of these things were bad. Why did it take so long? Why did we destroy actual communities earlier on? Now with phones and devices we are even more separated. Maybe that has been the final nudge that we need to realize that we want some community in our physical life.

Many times cities are "killed" rather than suffer natural deaths. Planners confuse "density" with "overcrowding". High density areas are often very successful, especially if people care. Neighbors will "self-police" to ensure everyone meets standards. People can also have a degree of anonymity in cities that they cannot in small towns. They can be private, yet still part of a tight-knit urban community.

The author criticizes the "garden city" and other movements that would likely be considered "new urbanism" today. Instead, she advocates pure urbanism. Keep big sidewalks for people to travel, play and spend their time. Let cities have many different concerns together. She spends some time looking at alternatives to public housing. Her position would look much more libertarian, with the government less involved than they are now. One key point is that people would still be able to live in the community once they earn too much to qualify. (Would this change incentives to hide income?) There seem to be some flaws, though she admits that it is a starting point and should be revised as needed. in some places, we do allow people to remain after earning more. There are attempts to have more "mixed income housing". However, the entire public housing system still suffers many of the same problems that the author identified in the the early 1960s.