This is my first, and still favorite, Jacobs book. The dialogue form helps wrap the ideas in a useful context. ( )

I first heard of this book from Venkatesh Rao, subconsciously I'd been building it up in my head for years. The actual text is a letdown, and the dialog format is a distracting affectation. The Wikipedia page on Systems of Survival gives a perfectly adequate encapsulation of the guardian and commerce syndromes

Still fun to think about. Reminded me of Trevanian's Shibumi. The protagonist assassin Nicholai Hel who compares himself to a paladin, over and over we hear about the centuries of breeding that went into his noble ancestry, and over and over, his sneering disdain for commerce and traders. ( )

I was really looking forward to this as my first Jane Jacobs book, but I was disappointed. I found the faux-Socratic dialogue jarring and not believable, and the system they put together was at least lacking one element: survival-by-community. Our instincts for fostering social relationships would not have evolved if they did not enhance our survival, and there are too many groups in society who depend utterly on generosity to "make a living" (children, the elderly, some disabled, etc.). Basically what they contribute is being loved and loveable, and this isn't accounted for anywhere in her theory. ( )

description of the two ways of making a living in the world - commercial and guardian syndromes; conflicts between them and especially when one job takes on both roles

In this slim volume, Jacobs articulates the two moral systems humans have evolved over the centuries: that of traders (commerce), and that of guardians (government). Once stated, they seem so obvious, but failure to recognize the differences results in serious chaos. As topical today as it was in the 1990s, this book is a must for anyone curious about the evolution and sustainability of human society. ( )

Speaking as guardian who has spent his life as a commercial I found this book very enlightening. It's a brilliant exposition of the tensions between the two systems and the way that they are fated to live together. The book made it clear to me that society needs both guardians and commercials (ie structure and flexibility).
As an interesting aside Jane Jacobs wrote it when she was 76!!

UPDATE 23rd November 2014:

An aspect of Commercials/Guardians that isn't in the book, but perhaps could have been, is the way in which the dominance of one or the other seems to run through cycles. In the US for example, commercials have been dominant since the 1980's and this society is showing all the signs of commercial infiltration of guardian areas.

Examples could be the "revolving door" between business and administration (they should be quite separate), the inability of guardians (government)to resist commercial pressure for speculative bailouts or prosecute high level corporate crime or the failure of government to control special (commercial) interests.

The prediction is a return to a dominant Guardian system which will certainly seek to protect society from commercial abuses but could itself risk a slide into dictatorship. ( )

My favourite book by Jane Jacobs. ( )