Can I read Becoming Jane Jacobs on EtoBox?

Becoming Jane Jacobs by Peter L. Laurence is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Becoming Jane Jacobs about?

Jane Jacobs is universally recognized as one of the key figures in American urbanism. The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she uncovered the complex and intertwined physical and social fabric of the city and excoriated the urban renewal policies of the 1950s. As the legend goes, Jacobs, a housewife, single-handedly stood up to Robert Moses, New York City's powerful master builder, and other city planners who sought first to level her Greenwich Village neighborhood and then to drive a highway through it. Jacobs's most effective weapons in these David-versus-Goliath battles, and in writing her book, were her powers of observation and common sense.What is missing from such discussions and other myths about Jacobs, according to Peter L. Laurence, is a critical examination of how she arrived at her ideas about city life. Laurence shows that although Jacobs had only a high school diploma, she was nevertheless immersed in an elite intellectual community of architects and urbanists. Becoming Jane Jacobs is an intellectual biography that chronicles Jacobs's development, influences, and writing career, and provides a new foundation for understanding Death and Life and h

Author

Peter L. Laurence

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published

2015

Language

EN

ISBN

9780812292466

Subjects

History, Sociology, Architecture

Rating

5 / 5 (6 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14