Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs

A career-spanning selection of previously uncollected writings and talks by the legendary author and activist
No 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 Citiesstarted a global [...]
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A career-spanning selection of previously uncollected writings and talks by the legendary author and activist
No 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 Citiesstarted 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 s other books on urbanism, economics, politics, and ethics. It offers readers a unique survey of her entire career in forty short pieces that have never been collected in a single volume, from charming and incisive urban vignettes from the 1930s to the raw materials of her two unfinished books of the 2000s, together with introductions and annotations by editors Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring. Readers will find classics here, including Jacobs s breakout article Downtown Is for People, as well as lesser-known gems like her speech at the inaugural Earth Day and a host of other rare or previously unavailable essays, articles, speeches, interviews, and lectures. Some pieces shed light on the development of her most famous insights, while others explore topics rarely dissected in her major works, from globalization to feminism to universal health care.
With this book, published in Jacobs s centenary year, contemporary readers whether well versed in her ideas or new to her writing are finally able to appreciate the full scope of her remarkable voice and vision. At a time when urban life is booming and people all over the world are moving to cities, the words of Jane Jacobs have never been more significant. Vital Little Plansweaves a lifetime of ideas from the most prominent urbanist of the twentieth century into a book that s indispensable to life in the twenty-first.
Praise for Vital Little Plans

A timely reminder] of the clarity and originality of Jane Jacobs s] thought. Toronto Star

Vital Little Plans] comes to the foreground for Jane Jacobs s] centennial, and in a time when more of Jacobs s prescient wisdom is needed. Metropolis
Jane Jacobs] was one of three people I have met in a lifetime of meeting people who had an aura of sainthood about them. . . . The ability to radiate certainty without condescension, to be both very sure and very simple, is a potent one, and witnessing it in life explains a lot in history that might otherwise be inexplicable for instance, how a sixteen-year-old girl could lead the French Army to victory. Jane Jacobs s aura was so powerful that it made her, precisely, the St. Joan of the small scale. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Jane Jacobs saw the city like no other, and her observational genius, practical wisdom, and moral courage are on full display here, making this brilliantly curated book essential reading. Matthew Desmond, New York Timesbestselling author ofEvicted
In these stirring pages, Jane Jacobs shows herself once more to have been the keenest observer of the urban condition. Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates, former NYC transportation commissioner
It s one thing to bring important ideas to the world, quite another to do it with such wit and subtlety. This volume reminds us what a crackling great writer Jane Jacobs was. James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere
This might be the very best of Jane Jacobs s books. John Sewell, former mayor of Toronto"