The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 June 2011
by Anthony Flint
In the field of urban planning, the middle of the 20th century is widely regarded as a dark age in monolithic and brutal urban renewal projects. In reality, the trend began much earlier, and notable urban renewal projects go back centuries (such as Hausmann's Paris or London after the fire). Massive, top-down, urban planning cut huge swaths out of American cities (the same happened in Europe, but the devastation of World War 2 provided a cleaner canvas on which planners could work). No major city was without its particular brand of urban renewal. We have all become familiar with the common characteristics of this kind of centralized design: large open plazas blowing cold and empty most of the time, giant and of ten brutal concrete modernist structures, depressing mass housing, broad boulevards alternately deserted and clogged with sooty traffic. The world began to turn away from such planning in the 1970s, and it is now universally rejected. (This reader, though, has a not-so-secret affection for these often abandoned spaces. They've weathered the years poorly, but now have the aspect of modern ruins.) Today, the popular movement in planning is called New Urbanism, characterized by attention to fine-grained detail, smaller more diverse structures and uses. Like any large planned projects, some are successful, but many are sterile, mere nods in the direction of sophisticated urban diversity and design. Much of the credit for this evolution in thinking goes to Jane Jacobs, whose The Death and Life of Great American Cities convincingly challenged the conventional thinking in urban planning and deeply affected the last two generations of designers and architects. In her book, Jacobs argued for a fine grained landscape, diverse in architecture, age and population. This kind of diversity is almost taken for granted now, but in her time it was a radical departure from the norm. That norm was best represented by Robert Moses, New York's master builder, who was responsible for huge projects that sprawl across the New York landscape to this day. Moses was a monolithic monument in his own right, leading the city's urban planning for four decades. His broad cut through the New York landscape, constructive as well as destructive, was described in a Pulitzer-winning biography (The Power Broker by Robert Caro).
These two were constitutionally and politcally opposed long before they even knew anything about one another. They collided when Moses planned to put an expressway through New York's Washington Square park, just a couple blocks from Jacobs's home in Greenwich Village. A broad coalition of residents around the park joined forces against Moses, and Jacobs was instrumental in its organization and leadership. Moses was much more inclined to ignore public input in his big plans, having famously decimated a diverse neighborhood in the Bronx for an expressway. But, in Jacobs and her cohorts, Moses had at long last met his match. The expressway was defeated and the park saved, where it remains a city treasure. Seemingly as a result of Moses's vindictive retaliation, Jacobs's own neighborhood of the West Village was declared a blight and a slum and was slated for mass demolition and "renewal". Jacobs was forced to fight Moses again. And again when he planned another expressway that would have bulldozed what later would become fashionable SoHo and Broome Street. He didn't much care for fine grained democratic design, preferring the bold dictactorial stroke. Jacobs was frustrated by Moses's singular determination, forced to rejoin the battle against his plans at every turn.
This small book (relative to Jacobs's masterpiece and Caro's award-winning doorstop) is Anthony Flint's retelling of the confrontation between Jacobs (who does not appear in Caro's book) and Moses. Their battle would forever change the way planners and politicians would think about urban renewal. We are reaping the rewards of this conflict to this day. Flint profiles our antagonists and outlines their various skirmishes. This might be the most concise introduction to these significant figures in urban design (though the wise reader owes it to him or herself to read these other massive works). Flint goes on to summarize their legacies, and even suggests a certain amount of rehabilitation of Moses's reputation as a monstrous dictator. After all, much of what Moses built has endured, to New York's benefit in many cases, and has added to the unique charact er of that city. Still, much of what he built has had to be rethought. Lincoln Center, for example, has recently been renovated to integrate it better into the streetscape that surrounds it and to be more friendly to pedestrians, goals that Jane Jacobs would have appreciated. Flint's final analysis is short but sensitive, and his book a valuable and accessible retelling of the confrontation between Moses and Jacobs, between centralized urban planning and the building of neighborhood and community.
Also by Anthony Flint: [Modern Man]
See Also: [The Power Broker by Robert Caro]
[The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs]