City Lovers Have Lost a Prophet / The Art and Science of Urban Planning / Six Books for One Philadelphia

This post may end up being shorter than its title.  I can't help it, I had three ideas today and I'm melding them all together, so I felt it deserved three titles. 

Yesterday, Jane Jacobs passed away.  If I had to pick the next "One Book, One Philadelphia," it would be her seminal 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  Discounted at the time because it was written by a woman, and an under-degreed one at that, it has stood the test of time.  Her critique of post-WWII urban planning, characterized by aesthetically bland skyscrapers and rigidly segregationist zoning, has found a new voice in the modern New Urbanist movement, which extols Jacobsian virtues like dense, walkable cities; mixed uses; visually pleasing streetscapes; and diversification of industries within regions. 

I am, by nature, more of a quant than an aesthete.  I tend to approach queries like the role of government or the evolution of a city from an analytical perspective.  But even I understand that such things are as much art as science.  The Death and Life of Great American Cities may not be very numeric, but it is no less accurate, and no less relevant to cities like Philadelphia.  We who love urban settings have lost a great voice in our field.  But her ideas carry on. 

By the way, besides Jacobs' book, here are five others I'd recommend to whoever gets to decide on the next "One Book, One Philadelphia" selection:

Third and Indiana, Steve Lopez

Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis

Iron Cages, Ronald Takaki

Code of the Street, Elijah Anderson

Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth Jackson