Post by admin

First Edition of The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The 50th anniversary edition of Jane Jacobs’ classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities was officially released today. The book may still stir up controversy in the City Building professions, but it remains essential reading today as much as it was 50 years ago.

In commemoration of this anniversary, Toronto’s Centre for City Ecology (CCE) has partnered with CUP Projects in order to create the City Builder Book Club, an online reading series dedicated to the books that have helped shape our understanding of our cities. The first book we’ll be reading is Death and Life.

The way it works is this:

Each week for 12 weeks we’ll be reading 1-2 chapters of Death and Life with myself (Steven Dale) and Mary Rowe (Founder of CCE) acting as guides to the text,  blogging about the chapters read, leading discussions and moderating comments. If you’re looking for something to compare it to, it’s not unlike the blog-based “TV Clubs” most popularized by The AV Club.

Here’s the twist: In addition to weekly posts by Mary and myself, we’ve also lined up a great crew of “Guest Guides” who’ll each blog about one specific chapter of interest. These Guest Guides hail from a variety of City Building disciplines and from all around the world – and for the transit geeks out there, we’ve arranged for Jarrett Walker (Human Transit) and Yonah Freemark (Transport Politic) to each contribute a post.

Right now we’re finalizing the schedule, but plans are to launch the Book Club shortly in Fall 2011. It should be a great event!

If you’d like to join the book club and want to know when we officially start, subscribe to our mailing list at citybuilderbookclub.org.