Watching the movie, I would say that I have to agree with Jane Jacobs on how we need to design cities and buildings from the perspective of the streets instead of looking at design from up above like Robert Moses. If you don’t consider the people who already live there and what it looks like from their perspective, you can end up destroying neighborhoods and create cultural divides like what happened with the Cross Bronx Expressway. Doing so also risks needlessly destroying important local institutions like the Washington Square Park. Robert Moses’s blatant disregard for the people who lived in the locations, even with protests, seems almost unjustifiable. While it is true that sometimes you must consider the city as a whole, disregarding the existing structure causes needless problems that don’t need to exist. While there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to develop bigger and more advanced areas, careful consideration of how people will react to the developments, and its long term changes it will cause, before trying to implement them. The key is to develop without destroying what is already there, by listening to the community and figuring out what they want and what they wish to keep. This is why listening during group meetings is important: if people voice their opinion and people listen, then development can only be beneficial.

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