We watched a part of a movie called Citizen Jane: Battle for the city by Matt Tyrnauer.  The movie shows the legendary battles over the shape of New York City between the writer and activist Jane Jacobs and the urban-renewal “Master Builder” Robert Moses.

From previous discussions in the class and also from the movie we came to know that Jane Jacobs was a journalist, author, and activist who lived with his architect husband in the SoHo area of the New York City. She is best known for her influence on urban studies, sociology, and economics. Prof. Joelson mentioned a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities that had raised the question whether urban renewal respect the needs of most city-dwellers. On the other hand, we have come to know Robert Moses as one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban development in the United States.

In the movie we see the constant conflict in the ideologies of Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Moses. Not only the ideologies were different, but the way of implementing things were very different too. One of the factors that struck a lot was the “Ribbon Cutting ceremony” of Mr. Robert Moses just like any other inaugural event as opposed to Ms. Jacobs’ “Ribbon Tying Ceremony. The fact that the development of New York City was a misinterpretation of LeCorbusier left me awestruck. The city that I had always to come to from my childhood was built out of a misinterpretation? That upsets me a little. Moses prioritized cars and wanted to build highways disregarding the neighborhoods while Jacobs acknowledged the importance of the sidewalks, the people, the community that essentially made up the city. She emphasized that although a lot of people on the street may look chaotic, but there is an order of complexity in it. A very systematic, easy to understand/navigate roadway system might look fascinating on a superficial level, but it only makes a dead city. Living cities are and will always be congested. This is what helps to create the theater of life in the cities. An old lady can spend all her day just by looking at the chaotic yet lively city street as opposed to that of an overtly organized highway.

In the movie Jane Jacobs introduced sociological concepts such as “eyes on the street” and “social capital”. She said deserted streets are unsafe. Not only officers in uniform can keep the citizens safe but actually, “New Yorkers keep New York safe” If we think of it with any of the personal experiences we might have had, we always tend to walk on the side of the streets that has enough lighting, shops, and people, because we know when we are at a public space with a lot of people no one will be that brave to attack you. We unknowingly rely on the other people on the street for our safety. Carol Geitzer, urban activist and a friend of Jane Jacob said, “The challenge is to build the city in which not just the rich live safely and nobly.”  And I cannot have agreed more.

I agree to most of the ideals of Jane Jacobs. But I still think the movie was a little biased towards Ms. Jane Jacobs, and assumed a black-and-white view of urban neighborhoods, that they are either Jacobsesque or Moses-like, messy and teeming with life or shiny and homogenized. And the movie slightly inclines to the fact that anything shiny and homogenized is dead or not very acceptable by the people of the community. But I don’t think that is always the case. Homogenized developments can also be beautiful; can also be lively and engaging. While I agree, Jacobs’ theories offered a brilliant guide to protecting existing neighborhoods; I don’t think it always helps us to design anything new from scratch. By that I don’t necessarily mean we want New York City to look like Dubai or Los Angeles in anyway, I understand the fact that situations, environment everything is different but still we do need to build new developments in the city but also keeping community intact. I understand it is complicated, but I have a firm belief it is possible to “build NYC like Moses but keeping Jacobs in mind”.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City is a great movie, although I didn’t get a chance to look at the whole movie, the parts that I was shown during class had a lot of deep meaning to it and a lot of information most common people might not know. The two biggest characters in this movie, who are real are, Jane Jacobs and Robert Moises. These two people are very different from another an they have different view on what they see in a city. Jane Jacobs has more ground view of New York City , whereas for Robert Moises he had a bird’s eye view who only knew from a view above about New York City. The main topic i got from the movie clips is that Jane Jacobs wants chaos because chaos is what makes the city and neighborhoods safe and orderly. Whereas for Robert Moises he just wants more money in his pockets and thinks that his plan are better for the neighborhood when really they aren’t. Robert Moises wanted to stretch 5th ave and have a bus go through Washington Square Park. Jane Jacobs was not having it, she loved that park and so did a lot of other people from the neighborhood, so to bring a bus into the park wouldn’t make it a park nor would it make it the centerpiece place for all neighborhoods to go to. So, Jacobs fought back and Robert Moises didn’t like to be told “no”. But, the whole neighborhood was in different rallies and saying no because that is their neighborhood and they know that all Moises cares about is his money and how to make more of it. Overall the movie showed a lot of New York City history that doesn’t get told and how these people who help run this city mostly think of the money they could make and not about the neighborhoods or even a thought on how they’re destroying the neighborhoods and the order of things.

After watching the documentary trying to determine whether or not Robert Moses has done to New York City did he help or destroy. To determine that we have to see what exactly Robert Moses did and how it affected people and whether or not his projects helped.

Robert Moses saw money and profit by proposing the idea of modernization and building new complexes. Essentially taking the failed model in Paris. By building many of these project buildings that were shown was a complete fail even if it was successful in the beginning the issue was that many of these buildings and areas had nothing around them and were poorly maintained. Another issue was that Robert Moses didn’t understand was the complexity of the city like Jean Jacobs who understood that the chaos within the city is perfectly in harmony despite how it looked from the outside. I felt that Robert Moses lacked this understanding and for him he just wanted to remove that. But in reality by doing exactly that he was destroying the city.

Building the cross Bronx expressway was physically separating the community as we saw that the community there had a massive ditch built and buildings torn down to build the expressway. This was because Robert’s belief that cars are more important for the city because it was up and coming technological change. He thought it would make the city more prosperous but as Jean Jacobs said it is the people on the street the life the street that make the city. The ecosystem and mutual bonds that create life in the city and make it possible. Not highways or roads tailored specifically for cars as those destroy and divided the city.