Jane Jacobs showed the world an interesting perspective, and a perspective that everyone should really consider. Robert Moses on the other hand, was a key person in the history of New York City who mainly just wanted to “rebuild” or “improve” the city. Jacobs was pretty much the complete opposite of Moses on many issues. Moses mainly cared about the future of the city, and he didn’t really consider what would happen to the people that were currently living in the neighborhoods that he wanted to change.

The Cross Bronx Expressway was one of Robert Moses’ most famous ideas. We might like the Cross Bronx Expressway now, since it made driving through the Bronx much quicker, in most cases. The issue with this was that people lived where the Cross Bronx now runs. Moses basically bulldozed his way and had the expressway built, but didn’t really care about the people that lived in the area.

Jane Jacobs fought hard with a group of people that had businesses or lived in the downtown Manhattan area. Moses wanted to also build a cross Manhattan expressway that ran right to the Lincoln tunnel from the Manhattan Bridge. This would’ve devastated businesses and historic buildings in the SoHo and Greenwich Village region of Manhattan. Jacobs got together with people who lived in the area, and protested enough to prevent the expressway from being built. It’s safe to say this is one of her bigger accomplishments, since Greenwich Village and SoHo are very important parts of the borough of Manhattan to this day. If it wasn’t for Jane Jacobs, we might not have those areas of Manhattan to this day.