Published in 1961, Jane Jacobs's book mounted a sweeping attack on the orthodoxies of modernist planning and urban renewal, from slum clearance to expressways and isolated tower blocks. She argued that vibrant cities depend on dense, mixed-use, fine-grained streets where many 'eyes on the street' sustain safety and social life. Drawing on her own Greenwich Village, she championed short blocks, aged buildings, mixed primary uses and concentrated population. Her campaigning also helped defeat Robert Moses's proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway.
The book reoriented planning toward street life and mixed-use density and remains among the most influential critiques of twentieth-century urbanism.
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