by Jon Lackman | 13 June 2007 | Architecture, Journals
Another angle of the ongoing Robert Moses re-evaluation can be considered in the March 2007 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Christopher Klemek writes: “a Manichean narrative depicting an epic clash of the titans — [Jane] Jacobs the Defender versus Moses the Destroyer — has become a popular trope about the salvation of New York (especially Greenwich Village and SoHo), if not all American cities … But in truth, the battle for succession was much messier, and upon closer inspection, the legacy less straightforward. After the publication of [Jacobs's] Death and Life in 1961, Jacobs’s greatest battles were not even with Moses, but rather his immediate successors … [whose positions had] some striking similarities to Jacobs’s own … If we seek a dramatic trope about the fate of ‘great American cities,’ instead of Jacobs successfully warding off the villain Moses, we should rather envision Jacobs and these other adversaries in mortal combat, going over the falls together.”
