Looking at Cities

by Allan B. Jacobs

Allan Jacobs has written a city planning book for everyone with a passion for urban environments. His message--conveyed in word and vivid image--is that the people who make changes in cities base their decisions upon what they see, and that their visions and actions, which affect the lives of millions, have too often been faulty. This book is about how to look at and understand urban environments. In order to plan sensitively, the city and regional planner must walk in, look at, wonder about, and simply enjoy cities. Careful observation is a crucial tool for the kind of analysis and questioning necessary to achieve good planning. Through observation the city planner and urban activist can learn when an area was built, for whom it was built, who lives there now, how it has changed, and how it might be improved for present and future inhabitants. Jacobs shows us how to read cities by identifying and discussing the many visual clues and their various meanings in different environments. Case studies of American and European cities--San Jose, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Bologna, Rome--and over two hundred striking photographs, drawings, and maps by the author present ways to read the environment that will prove indispensable for urban planners and will delight all city watchers.

Genres: Academic, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

First published June 14, 1985

About the author

Allan B. Jacobs was an urban designer, renowned for his publications and research on urban design. His well-known paper "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto", written with Donald Appleyard, describes how cities should be laid out.
Prior to teaching at Berkeley, Professor Jacobs taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked on planning projects in the City of Pittsburgh and for the Ford Foundation in Calcutta, India, and spent eight years as Director of the San Francisco Department of City Planning. In 1978 Jacobs presented his ‘Making City Planning Work’ that offered reflections on his experiences as the San Francisco planning director from 1967 to 1975 and guided on bureaucratic and political processes navigation that often hamper the realization of desired planning policies and outcomes.
His other books include ‘Looking at Cities’ (1985); ‘Great Streets’ (1993) and ‘The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards’ (with Elizabeth Macdonald and Yodan Rofé, 2003), which both offer case studies that reveal the key elements of successful streets; and ‘The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations’ (2011), a compendium of his career and thinking about cities. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berkeley Citation, and the Kevin Lynch Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jacobs taught in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley from 1975 until 2001, teaching courses in city planning and urban design and serving twice as the department's chair. He then became a Professor emeritus and a consultant in city planning and urban design with projects in California, Oregon, and Brazil, among others.

Reviews

[Boxofdelights · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You can tell a lot about a city by looking," says Allan Jacobs, and I do think that I have learned a lot from this book about how to start looking at cities. It is a slim book, 153 large pages including end notes and index. Only half of each page is text. The sidebar holds small uncaptioned black-and-white photos and drawings. Each of these offers a chance to practice looking, although even after thinking about the picture and reading the nearby text, I doubt I have seen everything in it that Jacobs can see.

Two of the chapters detail specific walks through specific neighborhoods. The others are called "Starting to Look," about how to look and how to evaluate what you see, "Clues," about specific physical details that give information, "Seeing Change," both past and future, "Observing the Unknown," about looking at cities of other cultures, and "Looking Back."

[Alexander · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had heard that this book was a cornerstone of planning/urban studies literature, so I looked forward to reading it, but I simply could not get into it.

I found most of Jacobs' observations to focus on minutia or to just be obvious to the point that they didn't need to be mentioned. The writing did not grab my attention or make for pleasant reading, and I found his graphics and layout to be unhelpful in many cases.

The final chapter has a nice exhortation to look at cities more consciously, but reading 130 pages to get to it was a real challenge.

Maybe I just missed the point. I honestly hope that others enjoy this book more than I have.

[Jim Strozier · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that has stuck with me in my career as an urban planner. Allan provides a very practical approach to seeing what is going onion our cities and neighborhoods. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is an urban designer or city planner.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have done without the frequent repetition of main points, but this book is a great incitation for getting the reader to look and question their environments more closely.