Jane Jacobs's famous book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) has challenged the discipline of urban planning and led to a paradigm shift. Controversial in the 1960s, most of her ideas became generally accepted within a decade or so after publication, not only in North America but worldwide, as the articles in this volume demonstrate. Based on cross-disciplinary and transnational approaches, this book offers new insights into her complex and often contrarian way of thinking as well as analyses of her impact on urban planning theory and the consequences for planning practice. Now, more than 50 years after the initial publication, in a period of rapid globalisation and deregulated approaches in planning, new challenges arise. The contributions in this book argue that it is not possible simply to follow Jane Jacobs's ideas to the letter, but instead it is necessary to contextualize them, to look for relevant lessons for cities and planners, and critically to re-evaluate why and how some of her ideas might be updated. Bringing together an international team of scholars and writers, this volume develops conclusions based on new research as to how her work can be re-interpreted under different circumstances and utilized in the current debate about the proclaimed ’millennium of the city’, the 21st century.

Jane Jacobs is an icon in urban planning. She became world-famous with her book 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'. Through her book and her street-level activism in 1960s New York, she became a key figure in urban planning issues, and her efforts following her breakthrough have been continuously interpreted and discussed. In this anthology, thirteen writers consider unique aspects of the burning questions she raises concerning what fundamentally makes a society sustainable. Together the contributors provide a sweeping portrait of Jacobs activities from the 1930s to the 2000s and situate her work in contemporary contexts.

Based on cross-disciplinary and transnational approaches, this book offers new insights into Jane Jacobs's complex and often contrarian way of thinking. Now, more than 50 years after the initial publication of her famous book 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' (1961) in a period of rapid globalisation and deregulated approaches in planning, new challenges have arisen. The contributors in this book argue that it is not possible simply to follow Jane Jacobs's ideas to the letter, but instead it is necessary to contextualize them and consider how they might be updated.

This cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary analysis looks ahead to the direction which urban studies is likely to take during the twenty-first century.

"This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding." From this first sentence of the seminal 1961 bookThe Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs gave voice to those who believed the bulldozing, postwar policies of urban renewal were a dangerous threat to city life. She spent the next forty-five years challenging citizens to stand up for vibrant, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods such as New York's Greenwich Village. Jane Jacobs's death in 2006 occasioned the beginnings of a critical re-evaluation of her achievements. With major new development plans—for sites from the East River to the West Side and from Lower Manhattan to Queens—either under consideration or in progress, it seems the perfect time to assess the relevance of her ideas for contemporary urban life. Block by Block is a far-ranging collection of essays about Jane Jacobs from an impressive group of writers and cultural critics including Marshall Berman, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Gopnik, Paul Goldberger, Tama Janowitz, Ben Katchor, Phillip Lopate, Luc Sante, Bill "Reverend Billy" Talen, Colson Whitehead, and Tom Wolfe. This impressive lineupof contributors discusses the contemporary relevance of Jacobs's ideas about large-scale redevelopment, gentrification,and activism. While their viewpoints on these issues may differ, they continue the important debate begun by Jacobsabout the challenges facing New York and other great cities everywhere.

Cities today are paradoxical. They are engines of innovation and opportunity, but they are also plagued by significant income inequality and segregation by ethnicity, race, and class. These inequalities and segregations are often reinforced by the urban built environment: the planning of space and the design of architecture. This condition threatens attainment of wider social and economic prosperity. In this innovative new study, Dean Saitta explores questions of urban sustainability by taking an intercultural, trans-historical approach to city planning. Saitta uses a largely untapped body of knowledge—the archaeology of cities in the ancient world—to generate ideas about how public space, housing, and civic architecture might be better designed to promote inclusion and community, while also making our cities more environmentally sustainable. By integrating this knowledge with knowledge generated by evolutionary studies and urban ethnography (including a detailed look at Denver, Colorado, one of America’s most desirable and fastest growing ‘destination cities’ but one that is also experiencing significant spatial segregation and gentrification), Saitta’s book offers an invaluable new perspective for urban studies scholars and urban planning professionals.”

By adopting an approach that is sensitive to issues of difference as well as to the role of the state, Cities of Difference considers the fragmentation of city life and the complex relationship between identity, power and place.