Vital Little Plans: The short works of Jane Jacobs

“The need for Jane Jacobs and her clear-eyed human-scale urbanism is as strong as ever… there is much in this lucid and persuasive anthology that resonates today.” Guardian

From the INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED author of the modern classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

No one did more to change how we look at cities than Jane Jacobs, the visionary urbanist and economic thinker whose 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities started a global conversation that remains profoundly relevant more than half a century later.

Vital Little Plans is an essential companion to Death and Life and Jacobs’ other books on urbanism, economics, politics, and ethics. It offers readers a unique survey of her entire career in 37 short pieces that have never been collected in a single volume, from charming and incisive urban vignettes from the 1930s to the raw materials of her two unfinished books of the 2000s.

Readers will find classics here, including Jacobs’ breakout article ‘Downtown Is for People’, as well as lesser-known gems like her speech at the inaugural Earth Day and a host of other rare or previously unavailable essays, articles, interviews and lectures. Some pieces shed light on the development of her most famous insights, while others explore topics rarely dissected in her major works, from globalisation to feminism to universal health care.

This book, published in Jacobs’s centenary year, enables contemporary readers, whether well versed in her ideas or new to her writing, to finally appreciate the full scope of her remarkable voice and vision. At a time when urban life is booming and people all over the world are moving to cities, the words of Jane Jacobs have never been more significant.