Part one: A city naturalist, 1934-1952 -- While arranging verses for a book -- Diamonds in the tough -- Flowers come to town -- Caution, men working -- 30,000 unemployed and 7,000 empty houses in Scranton, neglected city -- Islands the boats pass by -- No virtue in meek conformity -- Part two: City building, 1952-1965 -- Philadelphia's redevelopment: a progress report -- Pavement pounders and Olympians -- The missing link in city redevelopment -- Our "surplus" land -- Reason, emotion, pressure: there is no other recipe -- Metropolitan government -- Downtown is for people -- A living network of relationships -- A great unbalance -- The decline of function -- Part three: How new work begins, 1965-1984 -- The self-generating growth of cities -- On civil disobedience -- Strategies for helping cities -- A city getting hooked on the expressway drug -- The real problem of cities -- Can big plans solve the problem of renewal? -- Part four: The ecology of cities, 1984-2000 -- The responsibilities of cities -- Pedaling together -- Foreword to The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Two ways to live -- First letter to the Consumer Policy Institute -- Women as natural entrepreneurs -- Market nurturing run amok -- Against amalgamation -- Part five: Some patterns of future development, 2000-2006 -- Time and change as neighborhood allies -- Canada's hub cities -- Efficiency and the commons -- The sparrow principle -- Uncovering the economy: a new hypothesis -- The end of the plantation age.