ABSTRACT
The ideas behind Death and Life have shaped urban policy, influenced historical preservation, and highlighted the important economic functions that social interactions provide. Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great of American Cities (1961), was born in 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Death and Life challenged dominant ideas of city planning and policy. Jacobs argues that urban planners destroy great cities because they do not consider how people live in them, and offers alternative ideas about how cities work developed by observing interactions in the streets. Real-world conflicts over urban space informed the analysis of Death and Life. She was among the first to suggest that mixed-use development, with districts blending industrial, commercial, residential, and cultural space, improved city life. Even though urban planners saw large groups of people as a danger, Jacobs insists on the importance of these dense concentrations, arguing that this mix of people provided all cities with a source of vitality and creativity.
