socialmedian: City Planning Classic Ahead Of Its Time In Environmental Efficiency (VIDEO)

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City Planning Classic Ahead Of Its Time In Environmental Efficiency (VIDEO)

Source: The Huffington Post | Full News Feed

Nov 06, 2009

Summary

Progressive Book Club

In the annals of urban design and city planning, no book holds a higher place than The Death and Life of Great American Cities by the great writer-activist Jane Jacobs. The 1961 work, a scorching indictment of the car-centric urban development that then dominated (Hello, Robert Moses), takes up a simple question: What makes cities work as places to live? What makes them vibrant, varied, enjoyable -- livable? In crystalline prose that won her a readership far beyond specialists, and with many a colorful anecdote and example, Jacobs argued that the answer lay in a half-dozen or so key elements: mixed-use residential and commercial space -- apartments, stores, coffee shops, dry cleaners, bars, and restaurants all in one block; mixed-income residents; smaller blocks; fewer cars; small parks in neighborhoods, not set off from them; and above all, population density -- a lot of people in a relatively small space. Put it all together and you end up with something that looks a lot like Manhattan, and even more so Greenwich Village, which was in f

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