The Woman Who Saved Manhattan From a Freeway Running Through It (bbc.com)

dryriver quotes a report from BBC: A massive freeway project dreamed up by city planner Robert Moses would have destroyed Greenwich Village and altered much of Lower Manhattan if not for one woman's efforts -- those of Jane Jacobs. As vast tracts of this U.S. journalist's adopted New York were razed to make way for theoretically fast-flowing urban freeways potted about with soulless high-rise housing projects for the urban poor, Jane Jacobs, skeptical of grand plans and nobody's victim, took on the City of New York through her urgent writing and by galvanizing protest groups who took to the streets of Manhattan to save the city from being dismembered, disinfected and depopulated. Robert Moses wanted to clean up New York while investing heavily in its infrastructure: its public parks, swimming pools, bridges, playgrounds, parkways, Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center and the United Nations headquarters. For many years, New York's intellectual elite supported such developments, including the destruction of working-class neighborhoods Moses saw as "cancerous growths" in need of surgical removal. He accrued ever more power and pushed through and proposed ever more radical schemes -- notably expressways that sliced through quarters of the city like blunt knives. This powerful and disdainful planner made enemies, and none more so than Jane Jacobs.

Comments

Biased

[Avarist]

Well that's a horribly biased piece and whoever wrote that should be shunned. The article is not so much trying to inform you but much rather convince you which is never what journalism should be. I'm not saying I'm on one side or the other of the argument.

Re:Biased

[ShanghaiBill]

Well that's a horribly biased piece and whoever wrote that should be shunned.

Indeed. TFA is portraying NIMBYism as heroic. The freeway may have been a bad idea, but the other projects would have been nice to have. Cities should be dynamic, with growth, change, and progress. Stagnation is bad for our economy and is a major source of inequality, as rents are driven up, and poorer people are driven out of the most prosperous areas, while the rich cash in on the rising property values driven by artificial scarcity.

Re:Biased

[kenj123]

Please post an article with a counter view that defends the plan. I think the plan was ridiculous. NYC is a city for people, not for cars. Moses's previous project, the cross Bronx expressway is just as ridiculous. Why divert one of the most important national highways, route 80 and 95 through the heart of densely urban area like the Bronx? the problem is the alternate route would have gone through the Hudson valley and there are too many wealthy connected people who live there that would have shutdown the project. So it ends up in a lower middleclass immigrant area like the Bronx. The problem is its ridiculous for both the people who are just trying to pass through and get caught in local traffic and it destroyed many establish local neighborhoods. The disaster that cross Bronx represents was a big reason Jacobs could mobilize sentiment against Moses lower manhattan plan which would have done the same thing.

Re:Biased

[JWW]

Nothing Robert Moses thought of was a good idea.

I understand the people screaming about BIAS for this article.

Its a concrete description of how bad an idea these socialist building projects and housing concepts were... and still are.

Hindsight is 20/20 and hindsight says Robert Moses di an insane amount of damage to cities he had influence over...

Re:Biased

[kenj123]

>>Nothing Robert Moses thought of was a good idea.
That's not true. His early work on NYC parks was fantastic. Jones Beach is an iconic beach and recreational area.

Re:Biased

[ArmoredDragon]

I'm still trying to figure out how this is an appropriate slashdot topic. This sounds more like a topic for People's World.

Re:Biased

[phantomfive]

If that article bothers you, check out her Wikipedia page, which is nothing if not neutral. A clear sample:

Soon after her arrest in 1968, Jacobs moved to Toronto, realizing that her plans to block progress in New York City had resulted in the urban environment becoming untenable for safe and civilized living. Like a plague of locust looking for a next meal after nearly destroying Manhattan, she looked for her next victim, settling at 69 Albany Avenue in The Annex from 1971 until her death in 2006.[39] She decided to leave the U.S. in part because she recognized how filthy and dangerous the City of New York had become, and she fully expected it to die from there on its own. She and her husband chose Toronto because it had not yet adopted the anti-progressive attitudes she espoused......A frequent theme of her work was trying to stop progress and need to nurture the worst, most lawless and most dangerous areas of the city.

Good thing Wikipedia keeps me informed. I might have thought she was a reasonable person, now I realize the true monster she is!

Re:Biased

[kenj123]

Crossed it too many times to count, I live in the area. I even regularly ride my bike in the area, across the GWB and up to Van Cortlandt park. Those cars weren't breakdowns. They were purposely abandoned there because the owners wanted to claim the car was stolen to collect the insurance money and because it cost a couple hundred dollars to get rid of a car at a salvage yard.

Re: Biased

[dunkelfalke]

Cities also should be built for people, not for cars.

Re:Biased

[MangoCats]

This isn't NIMBY, this is "traditional neighborhood preservation" - which can be as rabid and overblown as NIMBY, but it's a different thing, really. NIMBY sends the problem off to somebody else. Neighborhood preservation embraces the problems of the past rather than rushing into the problems of the present or near future.

Freeways are truly evil and destructive to urban development, they need to be underground, or outside the urban area. The summary delves into social justice themes with the planner wanting to use the freeway as an excuse to raze the housing for the undesirables, but, really, the freeway itself breaks up a community when it's built in a traditional above ground (affordable) manner, regardless of who lives there.

If you want to talk about NIMBY - the "heroine" of the piece was actually the opposite, striving to keep the "problem people" where they are, rather than displacing them off to somebody else's neighborhood.

Re:Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes no sense for ANY interstate highway to run through a city.

That's actually one of the major flaws of the interstate highway system,. They should have been run entirely through rural areas, with spurs giving cities access to them. I-95 should have been built at least a hundred miles away from a giant city like NYC. It should service NYC with a I-195 spur that goes to but not through the city.

Running interstate highways through cities was one of the worst mistakes of the planning of the whole system. They should have been free flowing highways for interstate (or at least long distance) travel. As built, local traffic mixes in with the interstate traffic, creating massive bottlenecks in every city.

Re:Biased

[kenj123]

We're talking NYC area in the 1970s through 90s. then it cost like $200 dollars to get rid of a car for salvage. You could pay a tow truck or possibly drive your self out side of area but it will cost you about that much in tolls, gas, hassle. thus cars were regularly abandoned and reported as stolen. Its really interesting that you feel so strongly that everyone in the world has to conform to your logical model.

Re:Biased

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm still trying to figure out how this is an appropriate slashdot topic.

RTFA. Ultimately Jane Jacobs stopped Robert Moses by planting crypto-ransomware on the sole computer where he kept the plans - Moses was notoriously bad about backing things up. The ransom she demanded was high enough to bankrupt the project and stop it cold.

Re:Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken as someone who has no idea how city planning works.

Robert Moses's projects are a textbook case of how NOT to design a city. Billions of dollars of waterfront property in Lower Manhattan is literally covered by a highway designed and created by... Robert Moses.

On top of that billions of dollars worth of almost-next-to-waterfront New York City property were converted into low income housing projects designed and created by... Robert Moses.

To top it all off, the people living in the projects KNOW how valuable the property is so they absolutely refuse to move (even temporarily) so the government can renovate the building, because they're terrified its just a government scheme to kick them out... again... which is why most of them are living there to this very day. All thanks to Robert Moses.

Re:Biased

[mikael]

The problem is then that the property speculators would have built housing along that I-195. They would claim "just 5 minutes off intersection I-5, new development of luxury condo's with concierge service, minutes from the supermarket, bars and restaurants". Then shopping malls would have been built to be close the apartments. Schools and hospitals would need to be built. And the whole problem would spring up again. Everyone in a large metropolitan area is constantly looking to reduce their commute, so if they see a chance, they will take it.

Re: Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

In more enlightened cities, cars account for less than 10% of the people transporting themselves/being transported, and people manage to keep their everyday life together just fine. And even more now, that e-bikes are becoming more affordable and thus more common.

By enlightened, you mean poor? Because I expect that there are approximately zero rich people who don't own a car. Cars are simply priced outside the budget of people living in cities.

Re: Biased

[nasch]

You're frequently moving one ton loads of wood in a city? If so, you are tiny, tiny edge case.

Re:Biased

[westlake]

Nothing Robert Moses thought of was a good idea

When the American power plant at Niagara was destroyed in a rockslide in 1954, the private power replacement proposed replicated the ugliness of the original design with no additional protection. Moses cut the plant into the cliff face and produced an attractive and distinctive architectural abstraction. Very different from the approach taken by Ontario Hydro but still valid I think.

Re:Biased

[mikael]

We built high-rises in the UK. My relatives lived in one, and it had absolutely beautiful views across the city and the sea close to the horizon. Every floor has waste chutes for rubbish bags. Apartments had double glazing, central heating and were actually on two floors. The architects took a traditional two up, two down and stacked them up on top of each other. However, the problem is the neighbors. Some are alcoholics, some would use the communal hallways as playpens for their children; just basically throw them out and let them play until bedtime. Others woul run home businesses and use their apartments as storage room for stock. Teenagers would get bored and start surfing elevators and ultimately break them.

Those historic brownstones and other apartment blocks were only poorly maintained and decrepit because they had become overcrowded and there was more wear and tear than the rent would cover.

Re: Biased

[pdclarry]

Yes, he is responsible for Jones Beach. But he also designed the highways to get to it for cars only, with underpasses too low for buses. Intentionally, to keep anyone who couldn't afford a car out. He intended it for middle class only, not "poor people".

News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this either?

Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters

[ArsenneLupin]

Because she wasn't persecuted as a pedophile?

Cities should be about people, not infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

The core of Jacob's ideas is that cities should be designed for the people living there: Walkable areas where people know their neighbors and will watch out for each other.

Robert Moses built for the sake of building and to accrue himself power and influence- and displaced/impoverished many working class people to do it. He ignored the research that shows that building more freeways actually creates MORE traffic jams because it encourages more driving-only development and thus more automobile commuters. NYC's other transit options have never caught up from the lack of investment in them during the mid-20th century.

And if you think NYC is still something from The Warriors/1980s, try visiting the Village some time- it's one of the nicest neighborhoods of any city in North America. /urban planner steps off that soapbox.

Re:Hahahaha!

[Minupla]

I've lived in Toronto and Vancouver and found them lovely cities to live in. Stanley Park in Vancouver is a gem any city should be proud of, not to mention the lovely natural beauty.

Toronto on the other hand is a very functional city, with many different cultures.

Now property values in both of them is high, but that is because people like them and want to live there.

Min

This is why we have huge bridges ending at streets

[kriston]

This is why we have huge bridges ending at stoplights, emptying into neighborhoods with no street capacity, and having sharp, hairpin turn approaches.

The Holland tunnel ends at a traffic circle. A traffic circle. And an intensely dense neighborhood.

The Triborough Bridge Manhattan approach abrubtly stops at an abrubt 90-degree angle to the northwest and a 45-degree angle to the northeast.

At least we have I-95, after leaving the George Washington Bridge, lets us reach the Bronx, practically the only Interstate in Manhattan (they call part of this route "under the apartments").

And it's a funny amusement park where the Long Island Expressway just kind of oozes out of the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

And those are less than half of the results of the anti-Moses movement.

Yeah, none of it makes sense. But back to the topic. Nobody seems to remember how bad and seedy lower Manhattan used to be before gentrification transformed it into a museum piece today.

One fun thing to know and tell about about Mario Cuomo, though, is that he did make an off-handed comment about the impossibly ridiculous traffic problems in the City. He suggested banning personal automobiles as a solution. Really.

Re:Cities should be about people, not infrastructu

[Cmdln Daco]

And if you think NYC is still something from The Warriors/1980s, try visiting the Village some time- it's one of the nicest neighborhoods of any city in North America. /urban planner steps off that soapbox.

Visit. That's right. Because the average ordinary American will never have the opportunity to live there.

You might as well be suggesting we visit one of the historical reconstructions at a Disney Theme park.