The death and life of great American cities / Jane Jacobs

1. Introduction -- PART ONE. THE PECULIAR NATURE OF CITIES: 2.The uses of sidewalks: safety -- 3. The uses of sidewalks: contact -- 4. The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children -- 5. The uses of neighborhood parks -- 6. The uses of city neighborhoods -- PART TWO. THE CONDITIONS FOR CITY DIVERSITY: 7. The generators of diversity -- 8. The need for primary mixed uses -- 9. The need for small blocks -- 10. The need for aged buildings -- 11. The need for concentration -- 12. Some myths about diversity -- PART THREE. FORCES OF DECLINE AND REGENERATION: 13. The self-destruction of diversity -- 14. The curse of border vacuums -- 15. Unslumming and slumming -- 16. Gradual money and cataclysmic money -- PART FOUR. DIFFERENT TACTICS: 17. Subsidizing dwellings -- 18. Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles -- 19. Visual order: its limitations and possibilities -- 20. Salvaging projects -- 21. Governing and planning districts -- 22. The kind of problem a city is -- Index.

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.