“Jane Jacobs is the kind of writer who produces in her readers such changed ways of looking at the world that she becomes an oracle, or final authority.” —The New York SunHailed by the New York Times Book Review as “perhaps the single most influential work in the history of town planning,” Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities was instantly recognized as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1961. In the decades that f...

From the revered author of the classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities comes a new book that will revolutionize the way we think about the economy.Starting from the premise that human beings "exist wholly within nature as part of natural order in every respect," Jane Jacobs has focused her singular eye on the natural world in order to discover the fundamental models for a vibrant economy. The lessons she discloses come from fields as diverse as ecology,...

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written.Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitio...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.According to Jane Jacobs the healthiest economic regions are those which have strong and innovative import-replacing cities of their own. The economies of such city-regions are shaped and reshaped by complex, economically enlivening, interrelating forces originating within their own regions. Such regions, she says, become capable of pr...

In this indispensable book, urban visionary Jane Jacobs argues that as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we’re at risk of cultural collapse. Jacobs—renowned author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—pinpoints five pillars of our culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The...

John Dewey is known as a pragmatic philosopher and progressive architect of American educational reform, but some of his most important contributions came in his thinking about art.Dewey argued that there is strong social value to be found in art, and it is artists who often most challenge our preconceived notions. Dewey for Artists shows us how Dewey advocated for an "art of democracy." Identifying the audience as co-creator of a work of art by virtue of their experience, ...

In this book, Jane Jacobs, building on the work of her debut, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, investigates the delicate way cities balance the interplay between the domestic production of goods and the ever-changing tide of imports. Using case studies of developing cities in the ancient, pre-agricultural world, and contemporary cities on the decline, like the financially irresponsible New York City of the mid-sixties, Jacobs identifies the main drivers of urban prospe...

Critics have long voiced concerns about the wisdom of living in cities and the effects of city life on physical and mental health. For a century, planners have tried to meet these issues. John Sewell traces changes in urban planning, from the pre-Depression garden cities to postwar modernism and a revival of interest in the streetscape grid.In this far-ranging review, Sewell recounts the arrival of modern city planning with its emphasis on lower densities, limited access streets, s...

In this eye-opening work of economic theory, Jane Jacobs argues that it is cities—not nations—that are the drivers of wealth. Challenging centuries of economic orthodoxy, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations the beloved author contends that healthy cities are constantly evolving to replace imported goods with locally-produced alternatives, spurring a cycle of vibrant economic growth. Intelligently argued and drawing on examples from around the world and across the ages, here Jacobs...

Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) is known for her iconic installations that explored the relationship between humanity and nature, as well as the strength of the collective versus the individual. Today the power of her art, like predications from the past, are rivetingly real. This publication offers rich intellectual insight into the relevance of this Polish artist to the threatened present—a time in which geopolitical shifts between East and West and predictions of the Club of Rome (197...

The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land. In it, the collision of the American “New Barbarians” and the European “Old World” provides much comic fodder for Mark Twain—and a remarkably perceptive lens on the human condition. Gleefully skewering the ethos of American tourism in Europe, Twain’s lively satire ultimately reveals just what it is that defines cultural identity. As Twain himself poin...

From the INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED author of the modern classic The Death and Life of Great American CitiesNo one did more to change how we look at cities than Jane Jacobs, the visionary urbanist and economic thinker whose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities started a global conversation that remains profoundly relevant more than half a century later.Vital Little Plans is an essential companion to Death and Life and Jacobs’ other books on urbanism, economics, politics, and...