The Death and Life of Great American Cities
A 1961 book by Jane Jacobs arguing that diverse, densely used city neighborhoods foster safety, vitality, and economic and social life.
Mixed-use development: Urban development combining residential, commercial, or other uses within a building or area. Jacobs argues that combining uses brings people onto streets at different times.
Sidewalk ballet: The varied, overlapping movements of people that make a city sidewalk an informal public space. Jacobs uses this image to describe the order emerging from everyday street encounters.
Robert Moses: An American public official who shaped New York through large-scale infrastructure and urban renewal projects. Jacobs opposed the clearance and road-building plans associated with his planning vision.
Urban planning: The practice of organizing land use, infrastructure, and development in towns and cities. The book became a lasting challenge to professional planning’s assumptions about city order.
Eyes on the street: Informal public safety produced when people in buildings and on sidewalks observe shared streets. This is Jacobs’s account of how ordinary street activity helps discourage crime.
Urban diversity: The coexistence of varied people, activities, buildings, and uses in an urban area. The book’s central mechanism is the mutual reinforcement of different neighborhood uses.
Urban renewal: Government-led redevelopment that clears or substantially transforms existing urban areas. The book attacks clearance programs that displaced residents and dismantled functioning neighborhoods.
Community organizing: Collective action by residents to influence decisions affecting their community. Jacobs’s neighborhood campaigns exemplified resident-led opposition to top-down redevelopment.
Urban density: The concentration of people or buildings within a defined urban area. A sufficient concentration of people supports busy sidewalks and neighborhood services.
Social capital: Resources and cooperation arising from relationships, trust, and shared social networks. Repeated sidewalk encounters can build the familiarity and trust that support neighborhood life.