By Anthony Flint
FIFTY YEARS ago this month, Random House published “The Death and
Life of Great American Cities.’’ The author was Jane Jacobs, a housewife
from Scranton who had no formal training in urban planning, but had
managed to get a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and was
encouraged to write a book that would change the world. And that it did.
The book took on city governments, planners, the business
establishment, modernist architecture, and the policy of urban renewal,
charging that all were misguided, ravaging our cities with ill-conceived
plans that sucked the life out of communities, while depriving
residents of any say in their future.
For cities, it was the equivalent of Rachel Carson’s “Silent
Spring,’’ the sounding of an alarm, and an audacious assault on the
status quo. Jacobs battled the master builder Robert Moses and rallied
New Yorkers to fight City Hall.
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