The conflict between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, the difference between their two visions can be generalized to a battle between interest in capital and interest in public life; the automobile vs the human; the middle class vs the working class. One of the lines that highlights the antagonistic relationship is, “They [downtowns] are being witlessly murdered, in good part by deliberate policies of sorting out leisure uses from work uses, under the misapprehension that this is orderly city planning” (Jacobs 71). She could have been speaking to Moses himself because it appears men like him hoped to work in the city only to return to their secluded suburban homes. His idea of what a city must be was something of a corporate world, with residential areas available to the middle class and to the working class, one that Jacobs criticizes for its deliberate isolation of people and discouragement of social interaction.
More specifically, Jane Jacobs pictures a city that is fluid, composed of three components: the street, the district and the city itself. Street life and the social aspects of sidewalks are particularly important to her. She gets very theoretical about the capabilities of the district to present problems a street may face to the city, which is responsible for obtaining funding from the federal or state government. There is a large sense of connectedness and interdependence between the elements (and everything else) she presents. A street may have a problem of drug dealing it cannot resolve on its own. If police calls from residents aren’t enough, the district steps in (the way it did in Greenwich Village to thwart Moses’ plot to have a highway run through Washington Square park). In the Greenwich Village conflict, Moses seemed to figure that more automobiles meant we would need more highways and the cycle of economics would continue endlessly. What he didn’t anticipate, or ever seem to comprehend, was that it wasn’t “a bunch of mothers” who stopped him. It was more than the district stepping up to protest and reach out to organizations and papers to challenge his plan. His vision of a city that served cars and people getting to and from work did not resonate with the average citizen. A garden in front of a tall apartment complex isolated physically by its distance from primary and secondary uses did not ameliorate the woes of the working class. As the documentary, “New York, The City And The World,” put it, residential areas for the working class were made by those who disliked the city and lived in the suburbs.
Though Jacobs comes off as idealistic at times, she weaves together a constellation of elements, that, if present, can increase trust, economic sustainability, activity and interaction within a neighborhood. Something as simple as a neighborhood public character who can be a storekeeper, for example, can enliven the social world. One who speaks to many people, like a shopkeeper, can spread news of an event due to the sheer number of people he/she knows–a Mrs. Roosevelt, so to speak. While Moses may be a proponent of the private, isolated life, uninvolved and untangled in the affairs of his neighbors, Jacobs believes that too often, when presented with the choice of some interaction or no interaction, people choose none. Her words paint Moses as something of a Batman villain out to control the city and the narrative we often see resembles this view of Moses. On the other hand, Jane Jacobs is usually championed as a community activist and hero of the public, thwarter of plans to build highways. It raises a few questions:
- Is Jane Jacobs’ reasoning too abstract? Does it present too many conditions than are feasible to implement in a democratic capitalistic city?
- Can we truly maintain her four conditions for a thriving city when faced with private companies who have their own objectives?
- Jacobs also rallied citizens to oppose the Spadina Expressway in Toronto. We see a recurring theme of challenging politicians and highways. She would ask: “Are we building cities for people or for cars?” What do you think: has urban planning favored the general public?
