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Short Film: Citizen Jane: Battle by for the city by Matt Tyrnauer
Super interesting historical documentary!
Jane Jacobs’s was a writer as well as an activist that set effective movements through the architecture and planning worlds. She disagreed with several New York master plans of Robert Moses that saved many areas that we love most today. This film explains the struggles of Jane Jacobs protecting NYC from bad urbanization proposals.
Like most of the city of NY, her neighborhood was a place you can live a whole life without a car. In NYC life depends on how alive the street and interacting with the community. Robert Moses view was that cars where the future that belonged on those streets. This was a time where CO2 emission are not considered life threatening. He advocated that the ground level was for cars, and people would enjoy the city from the high rise levels. He was far away from the actual reality. His master plans required vast  residential relocation which would break communities to create massive highway, that were not in demand even. This was not what the locals needed, therefore they protested it. These ambitious plans of the time should have been planed with no effect to local residents,to improve their lifestyles.
Once I heard the point of Jane Jacobs where she emphasis the importance of the typical new yorker on the street level being a part of the community, she would make us question the hierarchy of the public street. Urban planing then further develops a set of design rules from this precedent layering Pedestrian path>Bike Lane>Parked car > Street Lane which to means a  protection for the community.

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