ABSTRACT
Jacobs’s writings challenge the anti-urban, American preference for low-density development and extol the economic, social, and cultural virtues of crowded, dense, and diverse cities. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she describes her own work as no less than an “attack” on conventional planning and building practices: “My attack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods or hair-splitting about fashions in design. It is an attack, rather, on the principles and aims that have shaped modern, orthodox city planning and rebuilding.” In this section of her chapter, “The Need for Concentration,” she disputes the belief that high density correlates with “trouble” and overcrowding, and distinguishes between dense concentrations of dwellings and dwellings that are overcrowded.
