This week, we are reading Chapter 1 (the Introduction) of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Tomorrow we will hear from Mary Rowe, and on Thursday we will hear from Steven Dale. On Friday we will share an excerpt from an interview where Jane Jacobs spoke about writing Death and Life, and we’ll tell you about an upcoming event in Toronto that will discuss this book!
We are looking forward to your comments on this site, on Twitter, and on Facebook. If you are planning on blogging your way through the book as well, please let us know so we can link to you! For example, Upper Toronto will begin blogging about Death and Life with us next week.
In preparation for this project, we have created some guidelines for the comments on this site. As you know if you have ever visited a site with unmoderated comments, online conversations can get ugly. We would like to have a pleasant, thoughtful conversation with you about Death and Life, so we have put these guidelines in place. If you see a conversation on our site that is becoming disrespectful or unwelcoming, please contact me at heatherann@cityecology.net so we can talk about it.
Guidelines for Contributing Comments to the City Builder Book Club
This book club seeks to cultivate an open and thoughtful conversation leading to a deeper understanding of cities and their citizens, using the books we read to steer our discussion. It is open to ideas from anywhere and anyone, so long as they are presented respectfully.
We invite our commenters to engage with us in a discussion about our shared love for and curiosity about cities. We trust you to be respectful of everyone and their ideas, especially when you disagree.
When we are willing to consider new ideas from unexpected sources, we are able to find new allies and colleagues. When we treat others with honour and respect, we enable them to approach us as friends. In this way, we become able to develop a rich, shared understanding of our cities.
Heather Ann Kaldeway
Heather Ann Kaldeway is the Project Manager and Communications Coordinator for the Centre for City Ecology and is a member of her local community association in downtown Toronto. She loves vibrant cities, terrible jokes, and challenging books.
Cool! Good excuse to break out my new copy. I was thinking of re-reading it this spring anyhow (and maybe even blogging about it).
Wonderful that you’re doing this! I have taught D&L to a number of planning and arch. classes, and the students are always astonished at how far-sighted and still relevant it is, half a century later. I also wrote a blog post on it recently for Planetizen, at http://www.planetizen.com/node/53128 – it might be too early to look at this now, but later in the process it might be of interest!
I also wanted to say hi to my friend mary Rowe, who I have not seen since New Orleans – hello Mary!
Best,
Michael Mehaffy
Instructor/author/consultant