The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard : : Contradiction and Meaning in City Form / / Abraham Akkerman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
• VerfasserIn: Akkerman, Abraham,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 2 figures

Ebenezer Howard, an Englishman, and Jane Jacobs, a naturalized Canadian, personify the twentieth century’s opposing outlooks on cities. Howard had envisaged small towns, newly built from scratch, fashioned on single family homes with small gardens. Jacobs embraced existing inner-city neighbourhoods emphasizing the verve of the living street. From Howard’s idea, the American Dream of garden suburbs had emerged, yet his conceptualization of a modern city received criticism for being uniform and alienated from the rest of the city. Similarly, at the turn of the new century, Jacobs’ inner-city neighbourhoods came to be recognized as the result of commodification, vacillating between poverty and newly discovered hubs of urban authenticity. Presenting Howard and Jacobs within a psychocultural context, The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard addresses our urban crisis in the recognition that "city form" is a gendered, allegorical medium expressing femininity and masculinity within two founding features of the built environment: void and volume. Both founding contrasts bring tensions, but also the opportunities of fusion between pairs of urban polarities: human scale against superscale, gait against speed, and spontaneity against surveillance. Jacobs and Howard, in their respective attitudes, have come to embrace the two ancient archetypes, the Garden and the Citadel, leaving it to future generations to blend their two contrarian stances.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Preface -- Introduction. Modernity and Its Urban Context -- 1. Paradigms of City Form in the Urbanism of Ebenezer Howard and Jane Jacobs -- 2. Howard vs Jacobs: Ideal City or Authentic Street? -- 3. Twentieth-Century Transformations of the Garden and the City -- 4. The Neighbourhood as a State of Wonderment: The Urbanist Dream of Jane Jacobs -- 5. Spectacle and Contempt in City Form: Howard and Jacobs -- 6. The Ghost of Howard: Advent of the Masterplan and the Loss of Place -- 7. “Growth Ain’t Expansion”: Jacobs in Toronto -- 8. Urban Space: Medium or Message? -- Bibliography -- Index