Dark Age Ahead: Author of The Death and Life of Great American CitiesVisionary thinker Jane Jacobs uses her authoritative work on urban life and economies to show us how we can protect and strengthen our culture and communities. In Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs identifies five pillars of our culture that we depend on but which are in serious decline: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation and government; and self-policing by learned professions. The decay of these pillars, Jacobs contends, is behind such ills as environmental crisis, racism and the growing gulf between rich and poor; their continued degradation could lead us into a new Dark Age, a period of cultural collapse in which all that keeps a society alive and vibrant is forgotten. But this is a hopeful book as well as a warning. Jacobs draws on her vast frame of reference -- from fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to zoning regulations in Brampton, Ontario -- and in highly readable, invigorating prose offers proposals that could arrest the cycles of decay and turn them into beneficent ones. Wise, worldly, full of real-life examples and accessible concepts, this book is an essential read for perilous times. |
Contents
ONE The Hazard | 3 |
TWO Families Rigged to Fail | 27 |
THREE Credentialing Versus Educating | 44 |
FOUR Science Abandoned | 64 |
SEVEN Unwinding Vicious Spirals I 39 | 139 |
EIGHT Dark Age Patterns | 161 |
Common terms and phrases
accounting afford American areas became become buildings called Canada Canadian causes century close corporations costs credentialing culture Dark Age early economic effect engineering Europe European evidence example exist expensive families farm federal followed force former grants happened housing human important income increased industry institutions interest knowledge lack land less living loss lost means North North America numbers percent perhaps planning police poor population practical production professional programs province question rates reasons rent replacing reported residents responsible roads Roman routes says seems social society street suburbs successful things thousand tion Toronto trade traffic transit turn United University Western York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Dark Age Ahead: Author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities |
| Author | Jane Jacobs |
| Publisher | Random House of Canada, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0307369633, 9780307369635 |
| Length | 256 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / Economics / Theory Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social Social Science / Sociology / Urban |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |