Reading Groups

Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities with Brad Vogel

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5 sessions Wednesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT October 8 to November 12, 2025

The Center for Fiction

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
10/8, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/12
In Person at The Center for Fiction

Following last season’s popular reading group for The Power Broker, Brad Vogel leads a group focused on a classic book seen by many as the “flip side of the coin” when it comes to NYC urban planning. This is an opportunity to get to know the thinking of Jane Jacobs, a seminal observer of cities and the social functions and implications of urban design. If Robert Moses was “think big,” Jacobs was “think small.” Vogel brings his experiences as a community organizer, preservationist, urbanist, and historian to bear as the group analyzes Jacobs’ human-centric prescriptions in relation to contemporary “abundance” theories of how to fix New York City’s housing crisis.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read chapters 1-4 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs for the first session.

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a multivariate and fun discussion with a mixture of roughly half lecture and half guided discussion. Expect thought-provoking sessions. We may have a special guest or field trip, too.

Reading List:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Led by

Brad Vogel

Brad Vogel

Brad Vogel is an attorney, civic activist, and writer. He previously served with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in post-Katrina New Orleans and led the New York Preservation Archive Project. His involvement in major civic development and design battles ranges from Penn Station to the Gowanus rezoning to waterfront design to urban forest planning. Featured in the New Yorker, he has published two books of poetry, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times.

Photo Credit: Nicole Vergalla

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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