> I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs That's honestly something of a silly assumptio

> I would assume that the people working in there must be passionate about urban spaces and would've read Jacobs That's honestly something of a silly assumption. You'll find that a lot of entirely qualified and legitimate experts in a given field will not have read well-known books in their field: their expertise is very often the consequence of sheer experience. It's the rest of us, who can't rely on experience for know-how, who turn first to books or are recommended books. In the case of urban planning, it is a damn shame, because Jacobs' work constructively criticizes a lot of received wisdom that such experts are simply passing down without much modification. But generally speaking, it's not really a huge problem.