By: Jane Jacobs
In fewer than 300 pages, Jacobs dispels the myth that cities grow as a result of rural work. She uses examples as ancient as Çatalhöyük from 7000BC to as recent as the stagnation of the American economy to support her thesis. She reasons that any city growth is as a result of rural production is first attributed to developments made in cities and then transferred as rural work due to lower costs of production or other economic reasons.
She makes the argument that factory towns did not spring up as a result of small towns improving their production processes but as cities exporting factories to rural towns to take advantage of lower costs. Likewise, improvements in agriculture and livestock breeding were first city work later transplanted to rural areas. While cities are inefficient at production, they are key to research and development of new areas of work that later become rural work.
As with most of Jacob’s books, like her famous Life and Death of Great American Cities, the first two chapters are rather obscure but her message becomes clear as she develops her ideas for readers to understand. It takes patience to get what she means and sometimes requires repeatedly reading a page or two to make sure you got it right.
