Taken from http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-death-and-life-of-great-american-cities/topicsfordiscussion.html
How does city planning contribute to the decay of cities?
How is sharing and togetherness a function of city streets and sidewalks? Why do these factors contribute to the success of a neighborhood?
What are the four necessary attributes for diversity?
Explain how diversity destroys itself.
In what ways do cities finance colonization?
What is the sequence of events in the development of slums?
What are some of the suggestions that Jacobs makes for more relevant city planning?
From www.grpl.org
About the Author: Jane Jacobs was an American-born Canadian writer and activist with primary interest
in communities and urban planning and decay. Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally
well-known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed
local neighborhoods.
Questions for Discussion
1. This book was originally published in 1961. Do you think the ideas in this book have influenced modern
city planning? How?
2. Jacobs identifies three purposes for sidewalks - safety, contact, and assimilating children. How do these
uses work together to create a better city?
3. According to Jacobs, what four conditions are necessary to generate diversity in a city or neighborhood?
Do you agree with her reasoning?
4. Jacobs identifies four forces of decline and regeneration in city cycles. How have we seen these forces
at work in our city?
5. Jacobs suggests several tactics to improve city performance, such as subsidized dwellings and attrition
of automobiles. What tactics has Grand Rapids used to improve city performance? What are some other
ideas that might help our city function better?
6. What makes a city a more or less desirable place to live? What cities have you lived in or visited that are
good examples of Jacobs ideas?
7. Jacobs ideas are considered to be a combination of the Radiant City, Garden City, and City Beautiful
movements. What elements of these early 20th century ideas does Jacobs draw on? Do you see evidence
of current city planning returning to some of these ideas?
8. Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejected the city, because it rejected human beings living
in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. Do you agree? Give some
examples.
9. One of the “four generators of diversity” that Jacobs identifies is “Mixed Uses” or activating streets at
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs | Updated 05.2013
different times of the day. How is this idea at work in Grand Rapids?
10. In the final sentence of his New York Times book review from November 5, 1961, “Neighbors are
Needed”, Llyod Rodwin writes:
Readers will vehemently agree and disagree with the views; but few of them will go through the volume
without looking at their streets and neighborhoods a little differently, a little more sensitively. After all, it is
the widespread lack of such sensitivity, especially among those who matter, which is perhaps what is
most wrong with our cities today.
What do you think of this comment? What does it suggest about being a citizen and a neighbor?