Product Description

"Jacobs has been working on this classic -- there's no other word for it -- for a decade. Jacobs rightly believes that good cities are made of good streets and that we're rapidly losing our talent for creating them. He measures and draws many of the worldÕs great streets, from Pittsburgh to Beijing. He describes changes in the street pattern of cities like Boston, where a square mile of downtown contains 100 fewer blocks than it did a century ago. . . . A thoughtful, sane, informed and very personal book, aimed primarily at professionals but readable enough for anyone interested in the subject." -- Robert Campbell, Boston Globe

Which are the world's best streets, and what are the physical, designable characteristics that make them great? To answer these questions, Allan Jacobs has surveyed street users and design professionals and has studied a wide array of street types and urban spaces around the world. With more than 200 illustrations, all prepared by the author, along with analysis and statistics, Great Streets offers a wealth of information on street dimensions, plans, sections, and patterns of use, all systematically compared.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62903 in Books
• Published on: 1995-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780262600231
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
With its thorough chronicling of building heights, tree spacing, relative widths of streets, sidewalks and cartways, this book will undoubtedly serve as a welcome reference tool for designers and urban planners. But for the lay reader, it is also an oddly poetic attempt to capture the undefinable quality that makes a street truly "great." To make his point, Jacobs, chair of the department of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, uses text and 242 graceful line drawings to explore the magic of some 15 great streets, most of them European, including Barcelona's Ramblas, the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris, Via dei Giubbonari in Rome and even Venice's Grand Canal. Other well- and lesser-known examples appear in a second section comparing types of streets--boulevards, commercial strips, small-town main streets and residential roads. Finally, Jacobs analyzes those factors that make streets great: buildings of similar height, interesting facades, trees, windows that invite viewing, intersections, beginnings and endings, stopping places and, to be sure, space for leisurely walking. These are necessary qualities, but, as Jacobs warns, do not ensure a great street. "A final ingredient--perhaps the most important--is necessary . . . the magic of design."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Jacobs presents an insightful, richly illustrated compendium of the best examples of streets from all over the world. The streets, both ancient and modern, are analyzed and presented as an instructional sourcebook for the architect, urban planner, and civic-minded reader. Jacobs (city & regional planning, Univ. of California, Berkeley) devotes the first part of the book to 15 of the finest manifestations, ranging from European medieval streets to the grand boulevards of Paris; from the network of finely scaled streets of Bath, England, to Richmond's (Va.) Monument Avenue, a tree-lined residential thoroughfare punctuated with fine civic sculpture. Examples are presented in plain-language text and rich line drawings, supplemented by street plans and sections all drawn to the same scale. One chapter, illustrating one-square-mile maps of street patterns in 50 cities, offers a fascinating comparison of urban fabric literally from Ahmedabad to Zurich. Recommended for architecture and urban planning collections.
- Thomas P.R. Nugent, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Jacobs has been working on this classic—there's no other word for it—for a decade. Jacobs rightly believes that good cities are made of good streets and that we're rapidly losing our talent for creating them. He measures and draws many of the world�s great streets, from Pittsburgh to Beijing. He describes changes in the street pattern of cities like Boston, where a square mile of downtown contains 100 fewer blocks than it did a century ago. . . . A thoughtful, sane, informed and very personal book, aimed primarily at professionals but readable enough for anyone interested in the subject."
—Robert Campbell, Boston Globe

Customer Reviews

Walking in Thought
This wonderful book consideres the civic street from many perspecitives and describes it with poetic attention. The author has spent days on these great streets and brings careful measurement and observation to his carefully crafted text. If everyone planning streets and highways in America read this book and visited one of two of these great streets, it would enable a huge improvement.

This book studies the street not from the simple American perspecitve of high velocity traffic sewar, but from the realities of a place to hang out. eat lunch, shop, socialize, people watch, court, celebrate and be. The read how these places work in this book is to realize how much our desperate focus on the automobile costs us.

Buy this book and photocopy some of its illustrations for your next public hearing on town planning.

If you're an Urban Planner or a World Traveler...
This is a reference book. Many of the most important and peculiar streets in the world -many of which you've heard about or possibly even visited- are thoroughly analyzed. Mr. Jacobs' accounts of his own travels and his feelings while strolling down those streets might even put this book in the travel journal category, although the focus is truly architectural and urban, complete with sketches by the author himself. Technical and historical information (street dimensions, schematic comparison of several different city plans worldwide and the decline of once great streets) establish this book as a constant source of information for architects and urban planners, as well as students.

Wonderful book!
I was really very impressed with this book! It's an exceptional insight into what really makes for a pleasant, people-friendly street! I loved it so much, when I finished it, I immediately went back to the beginning and read it all over again! Really, really very good work! You will very much enjoy it if you love planning, architecture, landscape design, or just livable, beautiful neighborhoods!