So this week, we primarily focused on the different prevailing views of the city of New York in the 1960s, as well as how everything really turned out. On the one hand, sits Jane Jacobs, a housewife and mother whose The Death and Life of Great American Cities, inspired a movement of conservation within New York City. On the other hand, stand the titan Robert Moses, who saw cities not as a place for people to live in, but more ideally as a place for people to efficiently get through on their way to and from work. As Becoming Jane Jacobs, by Peter Laurence, is quick to point out, however, it is wrong to view Jacobs as unrelated or outside of the views of Moses. Jacobs offers a response to Moses’s view on cities, and this implies she has a great deal of knowledge about this view.
Indeed, Jacobs herself was once a believer in the doctrine of Urban Renewal as a way to transform cities, and as a future for the city. She had written, as the piece points out, much in favor of Urban renewal, including the building of public housing. This differs from the documentary we watched in class, which quotes her speaking of a promenade in one of the housing projects as “coming from and leading to nowhere.” Although she later regretted her writing on Urban Renewal, when it became clear the damage this did to communities, she cannot be separated from the same historical context Moses comes out of: cities were emptying, becoming decrepit and poor, and offering little room for the middle class. At one time, Jacobs too thought Urban Renewal could be a solution to this.
As we cannot view Jacobs in one light, nor should we view Moses as entirely bad. Jacobs is not the only story where he becomes the Goliath who is miraculously defeated by a sling toting David. On Staten Island, Moses lost the fight to cut into the Green Belt with his Richmond parkway (http://www.silive.com/opinion/columns/index.ssf/2012/04/lost_highway_demolition_of_unu_1.html). An overpass still remains, unused and uncompleted as a testament to this failure. Yet, there was much good Moses managed in his strivings for power. Moses built parks, playgrounds, and beaches reachable by public transport (though often more easily with a car). Having been in the business of architecture and city planning since the time of Theodore Roosevelt, Moses was of the original advocates of national parks to as to preserve (not conserve) nature for human use.
Within this context, it is interesting to look at Lindsay in 1969. On one hand, it seems as if both Jacobs and Moses can be seen for advocating for the middle class in one way or another. Jacobs seeks to preserve their housing, Moses enables them to go someplace “nicer.” Their battle brings to mind the more underserved populations of the city, those who could neither buy a car or lived in neighborhoods where there was no Jacobs to protect them, or history of organizing, or even a voice to speak for them. Lindsay is criticized for speaking out for these underserved populations, as opposed to the middle class. As he notes in his biography, he is accused of protecting and appealing to this population with social services, and leaving the middle class outer-boroughs in the snow, so-to-speak.
-Rachel Smalle
Jerome Krase
May 13, 2017 — 12:50 pm
Good, and kind, analysis of both characters who played the roles of David and Goliath at the time. Much of the professional criticism of Jane Jacobs was as to her “amateur” status, but her brilliance, in my opinion, was penetrated the smoke screens created by professionals who didn’t think the general public was capable of “understanding” what was best for them. The later failures of community control, etc, were (again in my opinion) more a failure of politicians and others who cloaked themselves in the movement while pursuing the same (prior) selfish goals.