book
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
Jacobs's 1961 assault on mid-century planning, reasoned up from watching her own Greenwich Village street: mixed uses, short blocks, old buildings and constant foot traffic — 'eyes on the street' — are what make neighbourhoods safe and prosperous, and the tower-in-a-park renewal schemes destroyed exactly that. Still the founding text of modern urbanism and the clearest account of why some places thrive while planned ones die.
