Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities

Three books, all written by women in the early 1960s, changed the way we looked at the world and ourselves: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, and Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. All three books created revolutions in their respective spheres of influence, and nothing affected city planning and architecture – or the way we think about how life is lived in densely packed urban centers – more than Jane Jacobs's far-sighted polemic. This was an era when the "urban renewal" movement was at its most aggressive, and Jacobs correctly perceived that the new structures that were being built to replace the aging housing of our older cities were often far worse, in both their impact on society and their architectural sterility, than what urban planners identified as "the problem." She was ridiculed and pilloried by the establishment, but her ideas quickly took hold, and no one ever looked at what made for livable and viable neighborhoods the same way again.

Glenna Lang's previous work includes illustrations for four classic poems for children with Godine. She wrote and illustrated the award-winning "Looking Out for Sarah." Although she grew up in New York City, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.Marjory Wunsch has illustrated and written numerous children's books. While studying architecture, she encountered problems of urban design, rehabilitation of old buildings, and the ideas of Jane Jacobs. Marjory and her husband live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.