Citizen Jane: Battle for the City centers on the freethinking New York urbanist Jane Jacobs and details her most public and important battle with infamous city government official Robert Moses. This documentary is another entry into the myriad films, books, and even operas whose subject matter is their heated and consequential relationship but is most importantly a testament to the legacy of her thinking.
The first and most famous political dispute between the two took place over Washington Square Park in 1952. As part of the city’s slum clearance program, the adjacent neighborhood, Greenwich Village, had been designated a slum and consequently in need of renewal. As part of that effort, Moses advocated for an expressway extending from Fifth Avenue across the southern part of the Park, in an attempt to relieve congestion.
Scene from the TV show Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when Mrs. Maisel is invited by Jane Jacobs to speak at a Save the Square rally.
Jane Jacobs, a resident of the neighborhood, received a flyer on her doorstep to support the Committee to Save Washington Square Park. Not only was she a resident with kids, Jacobs was also an architectural journalist and urban observer who was finely attuned to the significance of the park. Washington Square Park was (and still is) a well-used open green space for families and performers and was also historically significant as it was sanctuary for artists and labor marches. The Fifth Ave expressway would relegate the iconic Washington Square Archway to a dusty overpass.
News of the proposed roadway sparked anger amongst the diverse set of people who had a stake in the park and inspired organizing that produced the leaflet that landed on Jacobs’ doorstep. Despite being relatively inexperienced in activism, Jacobs became a key leader in the protests. She is credited with naming the Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square Park to Traffic and formulating many of the committee’s protesting techniques, from flooding public hearings to spirited rallying in the streets. The movement became so vocal and effective that it even attracted the support of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Robert Moses, not used to this kind of focused, persistent opposition, was infuriated. In a public hearing, Jacobs recalled him saying, “There is nobody against this – NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY but a bunch of … a bunch of MOTHERS!”
As the tide began to turn in the protesters’ favor, Jacobs made the strategic decision to ask for a 3-month trial for a ban on automobile traffic, convinced that it would be successful and extended. Caving to public pressure, city officials abandoned the expressway and agreed to the trial, eventually making it permanent. Today, Washington Square Arch stands tall amidst crowds of people, not a car in sight.
This incredible story of activism could have been told thrillingly by Citizen Jane. However, the documentary has a bad habit of skipping details and presenting half-baked narratives. Much of the film showcases talking heads who discuss the importance of such events but tell little of how those events actually transpired.
Despite the film’s flaws, the story of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses on New York City and urbanism across the world cannot be overlooked. More than advocate for new singular design elements, she espoused a design philosophy for how to study urban space and people.
Robert Moses was best known for being one of New York’s most productive and ruthless Parks Commissioners, serving on a variety of public positions from the 1920s to the 1960s. He was responsible for the construction of almost 700 miles of road and numerous public amenities (like the Central Park Zoo, the Rockaways, the Henry Hudson Bridge, and the Lincoln Center). However, Moses was notorious for the heavy-handed way in which he brought them about. Wielding the power of his position and eminent domain, he led an unbridled and uncompromising slum clearance campaign as a way to cure the city of its problems. Low-income neighborhoods that bustled with vibrant street life and close-knit communities were often dismissed as lost causes in need of razing, a sacrifice he justified: “I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettoes without moving people, as I hail the chef who can make omelettes without breaking eggs.”
Cover of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, both a biography of Robert Moses and a history of the city of New York
It should be noted that Moses’s approach was hardly unique, as similar renewal was happening in other major cities. Via the U.S. Housing Act of 1949, cities could buy land that was designated as slums and receive substantial sums of federal subsidies to rebuild. Moses, as chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance from 1949 to 1960, completed 17 renewal projects and got $65.8 million in funding.
Jane Jacobs offered a more democratic attitude toward urban planning through her organizing and writing, which was irreverent and sharp. Without a credentialed background in urbanism or architecture, she had the advantage of viewing the city without pretense. She was an urban anthropologist, an urban ecologist, receptive to how the city actually worked, not how she thought it should. She embraced the city’s complexity, likening it to the life sciences, instead of trying to mold and simplify it.
For example, in her pièce de résistance, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she offered an insightful take on the use of streets: the “eyes on the street” concept. She observed that a well-used and vibrant street will protect its constituents via the eyes of its “natural proprietors”. This is not the result of a duty that they feel, but because a healthy street is interesting to look at for everyone. She writes,
“You can’t make people watch streets they do not want to watch…. The safety of the street works best, most casually, and with least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely where people are using and most enjoying the streets voluntarily and are least conscious, normally, that they are policing.” Moses’ urban renewal projects threatened these benefits that came with healthy, interconnected communities.
Jane Jacobs centered people at the heart of urban planning and placed the authority of the city with the residents themselves, a significant departure from planning’s traditions of credentialism and totalitarian rule. She wrote that we ought to design the city according to how it already works, not by forcing abstract theories onto the urban landscape and getting frustrated when people don’t respond the way they were expected to. As with the Washington Square Park protests, Jacobs paved the way for activism and community engagement in the design of public spaces. The impact of her work, which reinvigorated communities and informed urban design for generations after, has and will continue to make a mark on cities today that will far outlast any building.