The historic feud between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses is hitting the silver screen in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, a fairly new feature-length documentary directed by Matt Tyrnauer and produced by Robert Hammond (co-founder and executive director of NYC's Friends of the High Line). Following premieres at DOC NYC and the Toronto International Film Festival last year, “Citizen Jane” will be released in theaters and on demand in the U.S. on April 21.
Set in the 1950s and '60s in New York City, the film centers around Jane Jacobs' fight against Robert Moses' ruthless urban “renewal” schemes that targeted NYC's “slums” and its vital communities — a situation that many cities worldwide still face today. It also sheds light on European modernist ideals of architecture and urban design finding its place in the U.S., according to one film review.
“We realized that no one had done a film about Jane Jacobs,” Producer Robert Hammond said in a statement. “She came up with her own common sense solution on how cities worked. But it’s not just Jane’s solutions for New York, it’s about people all over the world coming up with their own solutions, looking around their own cities, figuring out how we’re going to solve the issues, from the bottom up.”
Especially to a broader audience, the film wants to bring attention back to a “somewhat forgotten history” in the present day when Jacobs' ideas are as important as ever, Director Matt Tyrnauer stated. “Set in the context of the world today, it’s as much a warning as it is a celebration.” So far, the documentary has received generally positive reviews (here and here).
Screenings will take place at Lincoln Plaza and IFC Center in New York on April 21 and the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles on April 28. Check out the trailer below, and find the film's other screenings here.
14 Comments
the poster is misleading, as Jacobs arguments were also flawed.
Jose:
I am curious, what is it about Jacob's arguments that you find to be flawed?
her simplistic look at a "gritty and dangerous" 70's city followed by an eyes-on-the-streets attitude. ironically she quotes justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr and nowhere in her book she talks about the role families and systems or the complexity and intensity of the city that Holmes alludes to.
The urbanism fetish for Jane Jacobs is tiresome and for simple minds. Like all big city types they assume certain variables like architecture are a given and diverse economies happen everywhere. Better to look at an architecural framework that isn't urban elitism but looks into diversity of cities, big and small, urban and country. Her defense of ground level experience was great, but surprised she was so dogmatic in her philosophy
It's discouraging that architects still start from a position of skepticism towards Jacobs' work. Her observations are too valuable not to be taken seriously and should be architecture 101. Sadly they are too often not.
All architects read Jacobs, it is arch 101. However it is annoying that Jacobs is the only (simplistic) ideology that current urbanists use, mistaking pseudoscience for a more nuanced urban study of physical realities. The flawed idea that a street makes a city. You are 30% right. All of this dogma isn't wrong, its just myopic and can end up leading to banal cities when used by technocrats who look for easy solutions
I am often around students (and sadly experienced architects) who take little consideration of how design affects public space. It starts with their professors who too often prioritize anything and everything over public space design when I would argue that there are few considerations more important than the design of the interface between public and private space in an urban context.
I'm not saying urban thinking should end with Jacobs, but it should very well start there.
My problem is less with Jacobs than the current urbanism movement that uses it as a lazy shorthand, like an equation for easy urbanism. Then they always use NYC as their only example. Give me a break.
I think your beef is with overspecialization. Architects and landscape architects and urbanists and polticians and designers all work in separate circles. Asking an "architect" about public space that is not under their control is irrelevant. A dentist may enjoy public space too but the architect is now only in charge of condo branding.
My problem is less with Jacobs than the current urbanism movement that uses it as a lazy shorthand, like an equation for easy urbanism.
This seems true with many, if not all, urban theories. Too many designers confuse the physical design for the abstract theory. Jacobs, Duany, Alexander... all fantastic theorists but mediocre designers. Then people misunderstand the theory and simply replicate the mediocre design. Then the theory gets a bad reputation because it's misapplied everywhere.
Chemex, I'm not sure it's overspecialization as much as it is at best lack of awareness (lazy practice), at worst outright antagonism (object-fetish). Every building in an urban context interfaces with public space, and therefore public space considerations should be fundamental to design. Sadly, I'm just not seeing it.
Hopefully a good designer is able to absorb these theories and such and contribute a good public facing design. But who gets to judge who is and who isn't? It's a grey area, usually one less and less explored because of the boxes each specialty is put in. I see many architects pushing forward urban facing ideas, but not many urbanists and politicians interested in architecture... it's a two way street. Back in the day, business and architecture were more closely aligned, and you got good public space and good architecture. Now you get mostly neither
"Back in the day, business and architecture were more closely aligned, and you got good public space and good architecture."
When you say "back in the day," what period in time are you referring to?
Jacobs, Duany, Alexander... all fantastic theorists but mediocre designers.
Jacobs was not a designer at all, rather a journalist, author, and activist, and a keen observer of city life (and not a scientist, so then not a pseudo-scientist). The fact is, like others in other arenas, she was the one of the first to point things out by writing what would be an influential book (just like Rachel Carson did with pollution and poisons in Silent Spring). But it shouldn't stop with them, they're just the whistle blowers as it were, and things are always changing. It shouldn't become frozen theory, that's just laziness. Not every place is like New York ( even New York itself is not really the same one she wrote about), but there's still a lot that's valid in what she observed.
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