"Jane Jacobs not Marc Jacobs" reads a postcard making the rounds in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a plaint against the increasing "mall-ification" of that venerable neighborhood.
But beyond her old stomping ground--where she famously stopped highway builder Robert Moses from building an expressway through Washington Square Park--Jane Jacobs’ ideas continue to resonate in the messy debates over how we move people and goods around our regional economies.
Lately, that currency has been given a boost by Anthony Flint’s recent book, Wrestling with Moses, about the battles Jacobs fought with Moses. A review in these pages by the seemingly ubiquitous Ed Glaeser spawned a mini-web kerfuffle with the reviewer being taken to task as somewhat of a Moses apologist.
That debate was highly theoretical, wondering what our urban fabric might be like if we hadn’t slashed through it with limited access highways. But we’ve already built those highways and stopped many others (D.C.’s Inner Beltway, Boston’s Southwest Corridor, and Seattle’s R.H. Thomson Expressway/ramps to nowhere among them) due to the upwelling of public opposition Jacobs spawned.
Though we’ve long abandoned the top down raw power highway development model Moses perfected, his star shines a little more brightly lately due to his ability to Get Things Done.
