Wielkie Małe Plany

by Jane Jacobs

A new book by influential urbanist Jane Jacobs, released in Jacobs' centenary, and showing her evolution as a writer and thinker." Vital Little Plans "will bring together for the first time a selection of essays, articles, speeches and interviews by the late Jane Jacobs. These works shed light on the development of the ideas she made famous in her best-known works, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities "and "The Economy of Cities," while expanding upon familiar themes with new insights. Some works also explore topics rarely directly addressed in her major works, from skyscrapers to feminism to universal health care to gentrification. Readers will find classics like her breakout article "Downtown Is for People" and a host of previously unpublished or obscure articles, speeches, and lectures that follow her entire career, from her early journalistic investigations into the specialty industries of New York City and the neighbourhoods that harboured them, to her critiques of the urban renewal regime, to her iconoclastic takes on economics, separatism, regulation, and the environment. Most importantly, it will reveal Jacobs as she herself wished to be understood: as a writer who tried to observe human life as closely as she could.
The book showcases the rhythm of Jacobs' career. "A City Naturalist" collects articles from her early years in New York, where she honed her distinctive style and her interest in the commercial and everyday life of cities. "City Building" critiques contemporary architecture, city planning and urban renewal. In "How New Work Begins," she explores the economic foundations of flourishing city life, and the environmental and political implications of city growth. "The Ecology of Cities" weaves ethics, government regulation and social justice into her system of thought, and gives her integrated approach a name: "the ecology of cities." In "The Unfinished Business of Jane Jacobs," she revisits ideas from throughout her career in the context of current challenges, and turns her gaze to the uncertain future of human life."

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Cities, Architecture, Urban Studies, Essays

406 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2016

About the author

Jane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States. The book has been credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times.
Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well-known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and after moving to Canada in 1968, equally influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under construction.

Reviews

[Colin Ellard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute must-read for Jane Jacobs fans, urbanists, anyone interested in cities. Fascinating book of essays, articles, speeches, and excerpts including much that was previously unpublished anywhere.

[ambyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtfully selected and annotated collection of lessons and speeches that highlights Jacobs's evolution and iconoclasm. I don't always agree with Jacobs (indeed, often I find myself frustrated at how much she generalizes from her own narrow experiences), but I can't deny her role as agent provocateur to the establishment or her wide-ranging intellect.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of small essays by (and interviews of) Jane Jacobs. Mostly her observations are as insightful as always. For example:

*She wrote about the negative side effects of federal grants for capital spending. These grants encouraged construction, but didn't always support maintenance. As a result, local governments are stuck with infrastructure that they can't easily afford to maintain. (If you are more interested in this topic I suggest strongtowns.org)

*She was especially critical of highway spending because of the negative side effects of urban expressways that are unrelated to maintenance. More highway spending meant more automobile use, which meant higher health care costs due to auto crashes. And more car use also means more traffic violations, imposing costs on the court system and police. Land used for expressways is land that cannot be used for housing or commerce, thus impoverishing urban property tax bases.

*She wrote about the absurdity of bike-phobia based on safety concerns, by pointing out that indoor substitutes for bikes (such as stationary bicycles and similar exercise machines) led to 18,000 accidents per year requiring hospital emergency treatment.

On the other hand, some of her ideas seem a bit outdated. She was writing when even dense cities like New York had plenty of underutilized land, so she was perfectly willing to support broad neighborhood powers to limit new development. We now know that this sort of neighborhood veto may preserve beautiful places, but also limits the amount of housing - something that was not a huge problem in the 1970s (when there was very little demand for city life) but is a much bigger problem today.

[Aviva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given this book five stars if it weren't for the format. The "academic" approach of providing more information and context in the footnotes intrigued me prior to reading, but I found it distracting and disrupted the cadence of Jacob's writing. However, as always, Jacobs takes on urbanism, society, and the built environment were still able to shine and I would recommend reading it.

[Brandon Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first time reading Jane Jacobs, and she’s truly an urbanist icon

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection of a brilliant voice of dissent. Nevertheless, Jacobs' absence of a theory of ownership--she constantly insists that ownership of production/resources isn't the core issue--was an exponential blind spot that doomed her vision of the small, local, diverse, and organic to the ephemeral at best.

The material that has come out of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, following in the tradition of E.F. Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful," has much overlap with Jacobs but with more structural endurance. The Schumacher Centre has collected and developed practices like credit unions, community land trusts, employee-owned companies, and local currencies like BerkShares in Berkshire County that actually embed the fractal vision Jacobs attempted to develop with staying power. Additionally, while Jacobs saw cities and their development needs as unique due to their import/export relationship, the methods of the Schumacher Centre have facilitated "vital little plans" in urban and rural communities alike with great success.

Only briefly in the 2000's, shortly before her death, does Jacobs begin to venture into this realm. There is one passage from a lecture addressing gentrification that finally makes the matter clear:

"Artscape, a Toronto organization concerned specifically with protecting and promoting the interests of artists, has come to the conclusion that the only sure way of preventing artists from being priced out of their quarters is ownership--in this case ownership by nonprofit organizations. The same is probably true for many other existing inhabitants--ownership by cooperatives, community development corporations, land trusts, nonprofit organizations--whatever ingenuities can be directed to the aim of retaining neighborhood diversity of population." ('Time and Change as Neighborhood Allies', pg. 360.)

Had this notion been applied to her whole career, she and her fellow organizers may have faced fewer temporary victories and lasting disappointments.

This book nevertheless contains a rich accumulation of relevant and sage advice. Her understanding of the simple things that make streets livable and vibrant endures. Her highlighting the good practice of the New York Public Library, testing locations for traffic before building new branches, remains uncommon common sense. Her insistence we should walk the neighborhood rather than formulate the abstract plans of an 'expert' who knows nothing about it is as close to an eternal truth as the field of planning is going to find.

If we combine Jacobs' sentiments with some of Schumacher's structures of ownership, little plans might yet manage to win big.

[André Habet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard of Jane Jacobs on an episode of the wonderful design podcast 99% invisible where her love of cities captivated me to learn more about her and her ideas. This collection of pieces written throughout her career is an amazing sampler of everything she thought cities could be, and everything she thought humans could achieve if we embraced the ways cities improvise and grow chaotically. Always clever, and with an ability to offhandedly shred misogyny in a single sentence, Jacobs was a writer with an extraordinary mind and always a good pair of walking shoes. I know this sounds like gushing, and it is, but I really enjoyed my time with this book, and hope it's something others can benefit from as well.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think about Jane Jacobs daily while walking through my Toronto neighbourhood, a neighbourhood that she was very familiar with and certainly played a role in shaping. There is lots that she would be proud of and some that would horrify her - including the recent invocation of the "Minister's Zoning Order" in a number of locations throughout the east side, most notably the historic Foundry buildings. In the spirit of Jane Jacobs, a grassroots community effort with a vision of what this space could be took hold and halted the MZO. This story would fit right in this anthology and I would have loved to hear Jane's take on the situation!

[Koby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Jacobs' theory is usually sound, and interesting even when it isn't. I really liked that this anthology followed her trajectory as an academic, and constantly drew references between her works so any student of hers could follow it. Her best pieces detailed her strategies of small-scale infill and community organizing, while her work becomes a little less concrete when diving into economics. The Queen of Urbanism still reigns tall.

[Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classical liberal in the truest sense, Jacobs presents an optimistic and challenging perspective on urbanism. She clearly draws a lot from Adam Smith, promoting free competition and flexibility as creating organic connections within the cities. She takes an interesting anti-Malthusian position.

Much of her writing points towards an “ecology” of the city, where lack of government intervention will foster natural relations between people. This idea presupposes the industrial revolution never happened, and society is not self-contradictory. In her writing, capital and class are sociological concepts rather than political ones.

[Edward B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Jane Jacobs - one of the earliest and most vocal and erudite proponents of Cities For People, not just (or even primarily) for cars.
Society and politics are only now slowly understanding the truth and value of what she was saying over fifty years ago and for decades.

I guess the variety of short works in this collection - articles, opinions, speeches - would be a good place to start, before getting into her famous major books.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Jane Jacobs since reading Death and Life, so I enjoyed this collection of her shorter works, interviews, and speeches. I think it appeals to people who are already Jacobs fans, and that anyone looking to dive into her thought would be better off picking up some of her actual works. To be honest, the most memorable part for me may have been the intro, which touched on her political views and worldview.

[tyler collin · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much intrigue and joy in this book. i love seeing a woman unafraid to base her opinions on her experience, all the while acknowledging she isn’t the end-all voice on the matter! 4 stars because i can’t agree completely with the woman, but a 5 star in my heart. jane ur intellect continues to compel me to think deeper and harder about every tiny little thing

[Margaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is just… nice. Most of the ‘theory’ in here is pretty intuitive and also repeated in like every other chapter. The first few articles were really great but most of the time I would skip entire articles just because I felt I’d read it like 50 pages back

[Stanley Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of reminders of the tradeoffs of city planning choices.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection. Well written thought inspiring and provocative observations.

[Krzysztof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Świetna książka pokazująca jak każdy z nas może dbać o miasto i o przestrzeń w której żyje!

[OvercommuniKate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like the Tales of perilous realms of Tolkien's work - good for fans who've read everything else. My favorite short story is "Islands the boats pass by."

[Ethan Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10 love you Jane

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was definitely an interesting read, though I'm not sure I really needed to read the whole nearly-five-hundred-pages. The early sections were useful as extensions of some of Jane Jacobs's thoughts from The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In the later sections, the topic shifts to economics more generally, though, and I am less sure how seriously to take all of her ideas.

[Flint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Six word book review: Seven decades of writing about cities.

[Maddie Pattin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Jacobs is my urban planning hero - and this compilation of her works was absolutely beautiful. I was able to pick it up and put it down over the course of a few months without getting lost.