This book is an attack on current methods of city planning and rebuilding. It is also an explanation of new principles and an argument for different methods from those now in use. It is the first real alternative to conventional city planning that we have had in this century. Jane Jacobs convincingly and sharply reasserts the basic truth that cities are for people, and that they must be livable and safe. She questions the standard methods of slum clearance, with its inevitable decimation of old neighborhoods and their replacement by lifeless, centrally planned superblocks, and explains why neighborhoods need such qualities as variety, vitality, economic and cultural self-sufficiency, the ability to expand economically and to attract a stable and responsible population.  Why then do some city neighborhoods die and why do others flourish? And what can city planners do to avoid the death and encourage the life of our great American cities? The solutions proposed by Mrs. Jacobs in this book represent a sharp break with the conventional thinking on the subject and they carry with them the ring of simple truth which marks this book as an inevitable classic of social thought.