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History Social History

The Urban Archetypes of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard

Contradiction and Meaning in City Form

by (author) Abraham Akkerman

Publisher
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Initial publish date
Apr 2020
Category
Social History, Geography, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487521288
    Publish Date
    Apr 2020
    List Price
    $32.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487501266
    Publish Date
    Jan 2020
    List Price
    $88.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487512828
    Publish Date
    Dec 2019
    List Price
    $90.00

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Description

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.

About the author

Abraham Akkerman is a professor in the Departments of Geography and Planning and Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan.

Abraham Akkerman's profile page