--LewisMumford. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.--Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.This century's most influential landscape architecture book.--Landscape Architecture. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning. --Landscape and UrbanPlanningIn the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a user's manual for our world, Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes.

    Her main argument is that explosive economic growth derives from urban import replacement. Import replacement occurs when a city begins to locally produce goods that it formerly imported, e.g., Tokyo bicycle factories replacing Tokyo bicycle importers in the 1800s. Jacobs claims that import replacement builds up local infrastructure, skills, and production. Jacobs also claims that the increased production is subsequently exported to other cities, giving those other cities a new opportunity to engage in import replacement, thus producing a positive cycle of growth.In the foremost chapter of the book, Jacobs argues that cities preceded agriculture. She argues that in cities trade in wild animals and grains allowed for the initial division of labor necessary for the discovery of husbandry and agriculture; these discoveries then moved out of the city due to land competition.*from Wikpedia

    Although "environmental studies" are the rage of the day, planners have been unable to arrest the disintegration of urban America; architects have often speeded it. STREETS FOR PEOPLE helps the reader to understand where things went wrong. For Americans are stubbornly putting their faith in projects and budgets with never a thought of exercising their individual duties as city dwellers. It never occurs to them that a town is not the result of a design program but the reflection of the inhabitants' way of life.So far, the street, the very lifeline of urban civilization, has not even come in for scrutiny. People have let their cities' streets degenerate into highways, indifferent to the cost in human dignity and happiness which this entails. To make the reader realize the wretchedness of his native habitat, the author introduces him to the unexplored world of civilized streets by means of examples from a dozen countries. Italy yields the greatest variety; just as her towns have always counted among the glories of man's enterprise, her pedestrian street is the touchstone of urbanity. By discovering its amenities, the reader may feel he has been cheated out of pleasures he has never known or suspected.For instructions and entertainment the author throws in a short cultural history of the street. He discusses the fine art of walking and other performing arts; street theater and street concerts of the past and present; the prevalence of Italian street scenes in Shakespeare's plays; playgrounds in American cities; the covered street, a commodity desirable, indeed indispensable, in every kind of climate. Sidewalk cafes and outdoor restaurants are examined for their merits, and so are pubic fountains and urinals. A survey of the street's temporary attractions includes processions, parades, the inundation of streets and squares in Baroque Rome (for coolness and for the fun of it), American block parties, and the perennial charm of street decorations in Latin countries and in the Far East.Without proffering panaceas or theories, this admirably illustrated book opens new vistas to the reader that he will not be able to put out of his mind. STREETS FOR PEOPLE weighs his chances for a utopian U.S.A. where pedestrians will be safe from the hazards of traffic and from each other; where the street will be the great educator and entertainer; where everybody will enjoy privileges and pleasures that are taken for granted in most civilized countries.

    . . Their subject is the frailty of modern civilization."