Jane Jacobs
£10.99 paperback / £6.99 ebook
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About the book
Who the Hell is Jane Jacobs? looks at one of the most underrated and yet influential thinkers in urbanism. The aim of this book is to bring Jacobs' highly original ideas and perceptive insights to light, looking first at who she was as a person, where and how she lived, and how her ferocious intellect led her to unchartered frontiers of thought. Her writings are presented in three core chapters, looking at not only how Jacobs' ideas about cities and the economy evolved, but how these ideas play out in contemporary society.
Chapter 1: Jacobs' Life Story
Chapter 2: Influences on Jacobs' Thinking
Chapter 3: The Vital Role of Diversity
For Jacobs, diversity plays an important role in many things, from the nature of the built environment to a country's economy, its culture and its people. This chapter discusses how diversity is vital to a city's continued flourishing.
Chapter 4: Density & Sustainable Growth
One of the four generators, of diversity, Jacobs believed that a concentration of people in one space meant that ideas could be exchanged and innovation generated. Here we will look at how Jacobs used the concept of density and how she linked it to economic dynamism.
Chapter 5: Democracy and Downtown
This chapter will look at four aspects of democratization in which planners and architects often fail that Jacobs discussed in her works and that continue to matter to us today.
About the author
Deborah Talbot is a journalist and writer specialising in urban and rural economies, development and culture. As a journalist she has published articles on transport, housing, urban economies, the rural creative and artisanal economy, sustainability and urban diversity in the following publications: Forbes CityMetric, InMotion Magazine, Reclaim Magazine, Dilettante Army and Inside Housing. She is the author of Regulating the Night: Race, Culture and Exclusion in the Making of the Night-time Economy (2007) and he co-authored and co-edited two other books. In her spare time, she enjoys urban and rural psychogeography, posting on Instagram @creativejournal_ne and Twitter @DeborahHTalbot.
