The Good City: Reflections and Imaginations

Cities, Allan B. Jacobs contends, ought to be magnificent, beautiful places to live. They should be places where people can be fulfilled, where they can be what they can be, where there is freedom, love, ideas, excitement, quiet and joy. Cities ought to be the ultimate manifestation of society’s collective achievements.

Allan B. Jacobs is one of the world’s best known planners and urban design practitioners, with a long and distinguished international career. Drawing on his professional experience of almost sixty years, Jacobs guides the reader through the lessons he’s learnt as a planner and lover of cities. Cities from Brazil, Italy, India, Japan, China and the US are featured.

Written with a wonderfully engaging, humorous tone and Jacobs’ own drawings, The Good City transfers lessons on city design, building and urban change to all those willing to help cities become the magnificent, beautiful places they should be - and encourages all inhabitants to learn to appreciate and explore their own cities.

Allan Jacobs has almost 60 years of active city planning and urban design practice, research and teaching experience in major American and world cities. He has served as San Francisco’s planning director during the tumultuous 1960s and 70s, a period of both confrontations and historic urban design achievements. Prior to that Jacobs worked in Cleveland, Pittsburgh during its "renaissance" years, and Calcutta, India, before teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. He has consulted and worked in Curitiba, Brazil, Rome, Japan, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Vancouver, and many US cities. Presently, Jacobs is Professor Emeritus at the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, and Professor in the Graduate School there.