Book review: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

I became familiar with 401 Richmond in January of this year. At first, my reasons for going were strictly business-related, but my partner and I decided to go walk through it one Saturday morning.

A lot of the facilities open during the week were closed that day (including the coffee kiosk I wanted him to try out), but in one of the attached building, we found this wall-length piece on Jane Jacobs. Ever since then, I’ve been slightly obsessed.

For those of you who may not know, Jane Jacobs was a journalist, author, and activist who studied cities and their impacts on different demographics within the population. She’s likely featured at 401 Richmond because she chose to live out her last years in Toronto.

In the piece, it mentions her acclaimed novel The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which was one of the first books I read during quarantine. In all honesty, I couldn’t put it down. I’m no Urban Planning major, but the concepts she outlined were so fascinating to me, and she made it incredibly accessible.

I immediately began to view the city differently, particularly how my neighbourhood is laid out. Jacobs talks about the importance of green space, how sidewalks need to be laid out in a way that allows us to explore our environment without feeling boxed in, and the dangers of living in suburbia (amongst several other topics).

I loved her attention to detail when it came to describing different areas of New York and Boston, and how the class divide wrongs both the poor and the rich. The poor are wronged by stigma, even though their communities are likely safer because people are more tight-knit and forced to interact. The rich (or middle-class) are robbed by the sterility of suburbia and the lack of watchfulness that can accompany that.

Overall, I would recommend it to anyone living in a big city (or considering a move to one), or someone just seeking to better understand why where they live looks the way it does. Everything has a purpose and is there by design; everyday aspects of a neighbourhood can be compelling once you start to understand.