Urban Planning

www.suapp.udel.edu/nvpa/home he Death and Life of Great American Cities, which will be hereafter referred to as Death and Life, was the first and most influential book by Jane Jacobs, a writer and city activist from New York City. The book was first published in 1961 and it frontally attacked the principles and objectives of modernist, orthodox city planning and rebuilding in the post-war U.S. Death and Life is a reaction to the devastating results of post-war American urban renewal. Jacobs ’ 1961 landmark critique directly attacks what she calls “orthodox ” city planning and rebuilding. She documents the failures of modernist planning ideas and argues that the various foundations of intellectua