• Jacobs, J. (1961). “Introduction,” from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, p. 5-34.
• Larson, S. (2013). “Jacobs vs. Moses” and “The Patron Saint” and the Git’r Done Man,” from Building like Moses with Jacobs in Mind: Contemporary Planning in New York City, p. 15-31.
On Wednesday we discussed 2 of the most legendary shapers of NYC: Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. (For a quick recap of their relationship and influence on the city, check out this video: Robert Moses Meets His Match). We began by situating Jacobs and Moses on the timeline that we sketched in the last class. Moses, aka “Bob the Bulldozer,” was THE City Planner from 1934-1968. Jacobs was an Activist and Community Planner who gave Moses hell from the late 50s until 1968 (when she was arrested for disrupting a public hearing on the expressway he wanted to run through Greenwich Village).
Next we outlined the key characteristics of their views on/approaches to shaping the city. Moses embraced “Rational-Comprehensive Planning” which sought to modernize and improve urban living conditions, and was the orthodox approach to urban planning in the U.S. from the early 1900s until the 1970s. This approach is rooted in Enlightenment ideology, specifically the belief that humans can determine the shape of their environment through scientific knowledge and practice, and address social problems (i.e. urban poverty, overcrowding, poor transportation, unemployment) with physical fixes (i.e. major public works and construction jobs). It was fueled especially by federal legislation and funding that followed the Great Depression (The New Deal) and WWII. On the other hand, as Minhal pointed out, Jacobs was arguing that “we need to know how the city works before we tackle the problem” and that the knowledge we need comes from everyday life on the stoop, sidewalk, and corner store. Jacobs observed what she considered good neighborhoods in Boston and Lower Manhattan, and based on her observations she proposed 4 key principles for urban planning: varied building ages, short blocks, density of population, and mixed land use. She criticized and fought against Moses, his orthodox approach, and many of his projects, and as Larson states (p. 15): “When Jane Jacobs died on April 25, 2006, she was widely viewed as the patron saint of urban dynamism, an irascible but venerable champion of street-level vitality and neighborhood diversity whose views “changed the way we think about livable cities” (citing Dreir 2006, p. 277).
Finally, we drew on Larson to consider different ways of thinking about the similarities (both super fetishized the built environment- Minhal) and differences (macro vs. micro- Tony, project vs. process- Minhal) between Moses and Jacobs; and how the 2 approaches are distinct but are not necessarily/should not be in conflict (Libby, Nick, Jeffrey, Amir, Erica, Adrian). Yet, Larson argues that “Planning like Moses with Jacobs in Mind” a la Bloomberg may take some of the best from both worlds, but serves primarily to keep the “city as growth machine” alive, and inequality extreme, which we will consider further throughout the semester.
For more on the lingering and contested legacies of Moses, Jacobs, and their approaches to planning, check out the following recent articles:
- The Lingering Effects of NYC’s Racist City Planning
- Liberalism and Gentrification
- Robert Caro Wonders What New York is Going to Become
