# Dark Age Ahead [author:: Jane Jacobs] [cite-key:: Jacobs2005DarkAgeAhead] [date_published:: 2005] [genre:: Business & Economics] [keywords:: [[Toronto]]] [notes:: [[jacobs2005DarkAgeAhead-notes]]] **(description-short:: 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.)** (description:: 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.<br/><br/>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.) - References (not an exhaustive list) - [[alexander1977PatternLanguageTowns|Alexander, Christopher. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction]] - [[brand2000ClockLongNow|Brand, Stewart. (2000). The Clock of the Long Now]] - [[diamond1997GunsGermsSteel|Diamond, Jared. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies]] - [[tufte1997Visual ExplanationsImages|Tufte, Edward R. (1997). Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative]]