I read Bill Steigerwald’s interview with Jane Jacobs (author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) today. It contains many interesting things, and the introduction sums up her book quite well:
Healthy cities, Jacobs argued, are organic, messy, spontaneous, and serendipitous. They thrive on economic, architectural, and human diversity, on dense populations and mixed land uses – not on orderly redevelopment plans that replaced whole neighborhoods with concrete office parks and plazas in the name of slum clearance or city beautification.