Dark age ahead, Jane Jacobs
Type
Label
Dark age ahead, Jane Jacobs
Language
eng
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Dark age ahead
Oclc number
60425073
Responsibility statement
Jane Jacobs
Summary
Visionary 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
Table Of Contents
Hazard -- Families rigged to fail -- Credentialing versus educating -- Science abandoned -- Dumbed-down taxes -- Self-policing subverted -- Unwinding vicious spirals -- Dark age patterns