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[This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I\u2019ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you\u2019ve read them all, I\u2019ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

If you know Jane Jacobs at all, you know her for her work on cities. Her most famous book, published in 1961, is called The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It criticizes large-scale, top-down \u201curban renewal\u201d policies, which destroy organic communities. Today almost everyone agrees with her on that, and she is considered one of the most influential thinkers on urban theory.

This is not a review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Perhaps it would be, if I had become interested in Jane Jacobs\u2019s ideas on cities like a normal person. But I didn\u2019t: I started with two books that came to me by random chance, or fate, if you want to call it that.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-cities-and-the-wealth