Winter Hot Soup, Good Books

Winter is an introvert's favorite season.  Snow and ice and short cold days give a great reason to stay inside one's comfortable house.  It's time to wrap up in blankets, get a kettle of hot soup cooking on the stove and dig out all the books that are waiting to be read.

Jane Jacobs in the Woo will be hibernating until the spring.  With over six months of blogging under our belt, it's time to digest what has been learned, read and think and reach out in real time and space to partners in the city.  Although we are shifting our online presence, our work will continue full time offline.  Please put Jane Week, May 1 - 7, 2017 on your calendar.  We will be planning Jane Walks all over Worcester, surprising tactical urbanism projects, a lecture or two and of course a party with a cake honoring the culmination of Jane Jacobs' 100th birthday year.  See you in the spring!

This is a growing list of books to understand the "Jane Jacobs in the Woo" approach to Worcester's urban development.  Enjoy!!

Books by and about Jane Jacobs:

Flint, Anthony. Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. Death and Life of Great American Cities.  New York: Random House, 1961. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations.  New York: Random House, 1984. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. The Nature of Economies.  New York: Random House, 2000. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. Dark Age Ahead. New York: Random House, 2004. Print.

Kanigel, Robert. Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016. Print.

Laurence, Peter. Becoming Jane Jacobs. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Print.

Zipp, Samuel and Nathan Storring, Editors. Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. New York: Random House, 2016. Print.

On Urban Planning and Design:

 Gravel, Ryan. Where We Want To Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Print.

 Lydon, Mike and Anthony Garcia. Tactical Urbanism: Short Term Actions for Long-Term Change.  Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2015. Print.

 Montgomery, Charles. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

 Whyte, William F. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. New York: Project for Public Spaces, 1980. Print.

On Streetscape Design and Transportation:

Sadik-Khan, Janette. Streetfight:  Handbook for an Urban Revolution. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016. Print.

Schwartz, Samuel. Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Perseus Books, 2015. Print.

 Speck, Jeff. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. New York: North Point Press, 2012. Print.

General Urban History and Worcester History:

Behrman, S.N. The Worcester Account. Massachusetts: Tatnuck Bookseller Press, 1954.  Print.

Boehm, Lisa Krissoff and Steve Corey. America's Urban History. New York : Routledge Press, 2015. Print.

On Suburbanization:

Holtz Kay, Jane. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back.  California:  University of California Press, 1997. Print.

Jackson, Kenneth. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.

Kunstler, James Howard. Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. Print.