Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City

by Anthony Flint

The rivalry of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, a struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, thought neighborhoods like Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal.” Standing up against government plans for the city, Jacobs marshaled popular support and political power against Moses, whether to block traffic through her beloved Washington Square Park or to prevent the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated superhighway that would have destroyed centuries-old streetscapes and displaced thousands of families. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city. Her story reminds us of the power we have as individuals to confront and defy reckless authority.

Genres: History, Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Biography, New York, Politics, Cities

319 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Anthony Flint is author of "Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City." A journalist for twenty years, primarily at The Boston Globe, he writes about architecture, urban planning and sustainability. He was a visiting scholar and Loeb fellow at the Harvard Design School, and also served in the Office for Commonwealth Development, the Massachusetts state agency coordinating growth policy. He is currently director of public affairs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (www.lincolninst.edu), a think-tank in Cambridge, Mass. where he is also engaged in writing and research. He is the author of two blogs, At Lincoln House at www.lincolninst.edu and Developing Stories at www.anthonyflint.net. His first book was "This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America" (Johns Hopkins, 2006). "

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. I was a huge fan of Jane Jacobs from reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which I highly recommend for anyone who is interested in or enjoys city life. When I read The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York I expected Jane Jacobs to make an extensive appearance and was disappointed to find that she never even showed up once. (That's right, my main complaint with the 1344 page biography is its lack of detail in one area. Apparently Robert Caro originally gave her her own chapter but the first draft was over 2000 pages and he had to cut it down to make it publishable.) So I'm really glad that this book popped up to fill that void. It's a fascinating fact that no New York mayor, or even FDR while president, was able to take down Moses, and yet he was defeated by a dedicated group of community activists. You could easily read the book knowing little about Jacobs or Moses because Flint includes background on each, but he keeps it short enough that it doesn't drag if you already know their stories. Finally, I really enjoyed the end where he summarized the the changing legacies of both figures and even the evolving appreciation of The Power Broker itself. The story of Jacobs' fight with Moses is important to understanding New York history but what is amazing is how much it still explains daily life in NYC in 2013.

[DJ Yossarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Death and Life of Great American Cities about 20 years ago, I found this book about its author and the causes she championed to be enthralling, even-handed, and well-written. Flint doesn't demonize Robert Moses, and gives him due credit for the parks, beach facilities, and bridges he built. The author also demonstrates that, although Moses was extraordinary in both his maniacal work ethic and the amount of power he amassed, his approach to how cities should be revitalized was very much in keeping with what was happening in other parts of the country during the period (Boston's Southeast Expressway is a good example). Knowing this context makes Jacobs and her fellow activists seem all the more prescient -- had she not opposed Moses' several plans to oblterate great swaths of lower Manhattan to build highways, the city would have suffered gravely. She understood long before most that cities are for people -- all sorts of people -- and not for cars. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in how cities work, how politics in cities works, or who just wants to learn more about a remarkable woman who took on city hall and won.

[Elizabeth Whitman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book after reading The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s book about Robert Moses, because the Caro book gave short shrift to a couple of Moses projects that did not come to fruition but which I was interested in: the construction of an elevated superhighway across Manhattan to connect the Lincoln Tunnel to the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the extension of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park and then the linking of the new lower Fifth Avenue to another crosstown elevated superhighway, this one running from the Holland Tunnel to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Wrestling with Moses covered those projects in detail, so served its purpose. It certainly should not, however, be read in substitution for The Power Broker and Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of American Cities.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A narrative nonfiction about urban planning??? Sign me up!

I really enjoyed this. I have been meaning to read Caro's The Power Broker but this was less daunting and lays a nice foundation. Now I also want to read Jacob's book.

[Mike Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly engaging, succinct chronicle of the decades-long battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses--and by extension, the mid-20th century status quo of the urban planning profession. Backstory: the moment I finished reading Roberts' seminal "Death and Life of Great American Cities" at the age of 19, I began researching planning graduate programs even before I started college and an undergraduate. Her ideas had that profound an effect on my and my education and eventual career. This is the *best* book on Jacobs I have ever read, and pulls together/fills in a lot of blanks about her life that I've never seen before in one place. Likely that's because she never authorized a biography while she was alive, and this book is as much a biography (and a really good one) as it is an essay on her planning battles. I read it in a day and it makes me want to go right back and read Death and Life again. It also made me feel really depressed about how entrenched political (and really, development community) corruption really is in my NYC hometown.

I bought this book a few months ago with another book on Jacobs and Moses that came out around the same time--Roberta Brandes Gratz's "The Battle for Gotham." It took forever to get to the Flint book because I could never make it through the Gratz book. (Still haven't.) Years ago I enjoyed Gratz's "The Living City" (the book that coined the term "urban husbandry.") But I forgot how hard that book was to get through. So is Battle for Gotham. Like Roberts, Gratz was also raised in Greenwich Village, and her book is as much an autobiography as a book about Roberts v. Moses. That's fine, but like Living City, Gratz is all (to the point of OMGWTF all) about detailed, often interminable set-up. I tried getting past the introduction and first chapter for weeks and eventually gave up.

The Flint book, when I finally opened it this week, is the opposite. It's full of detail and yet very readable. I wish I had started with this book first.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've never heard of this story and want to learn more about NYC planning in the 1960s (related topics: Urban Renewal, participatory planning and activism, gentrification, affordable housing), I recommend it! If you know anything about it, you probably don't need to read it (I stopped at like the last chapter).

[Stuart]

A bit hagiographic but thoughtful, thorough and useful.

[Laila Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow honestly this was kind of good. Jacobs was a lot cooler and influential on urban planning then I knew. The epilogue kind of ate too.

[penny shima glanz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over a decade ago I had the pleasure of taking Professor Kenneth Jackson's great course "History of the City of New York" at Columbia. As a Computer Science undergrad I was a bit scared to take the course, my required reading was generally much different in scale and scope from history courses. I emailed the professor that summer and asked what texts might be included, hoping to both get a head start and to pick up used copies. I received a kind reply and two books listed were The Power Broker and The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I went down to Strand Books and picked them up and read them before the term started. They shaped my understanding of the course and my view of cities, both my own and others I've visited.

A different reader read Wrestling with Moses last week than that nervous undergrad all those years ago. I've now spent time living, both in New York and as an adult. I've traveled more. I recently moved from Brooklyn to Westchester. In the decade that's passed I've not yet reread either seminal book, despite a long desire to do so.

However, I found Flint's work lacking.

I found the surface merely scratched for both Moses' and Jacobs' influence on cities, urban planning, and activism. The organization of the material felt more of a side by side clean comparison than of a wrestling match.

While apparently some aspects of Caro's lengthy work has recently been called into question for the harsh picture it paints, I still recommend The Power Broker and of course The Death and Life of Great American Cities for a clearer understanding of Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, and the City of New York.

[David Jedeikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling yarn about how Jane Jacobs, a Greenwich Village writer and mom, took on one of New York's most influential urban-planning power brokers and won. Told from a an earnest-yet-accessible angle (I think the author himself called it "beach-reading for urban planners") it manages to draw both Jacobs and Moses with depth and nuance -- even going so far, at the end of the book, as to show that the pendulum may have swung a bit too far in Jacobs's direction of late: When latter-day "neighborhood activists" who fancy themselves heirs to Jacobs begin demanding that absolutely no development occur in a city and the place should become "museumified" or trapped in amber, then we begin sort-of pining for the "get it done" mojo of Robert Moses. Overall, this is an artful narrative rendering of what's likely the biggest seismic shift in city-planning since the invention of the skyscraper and the subway.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Power Broker was required reading in the NYS Politics class I took at Stony Brook University as an undergraduate. This is a much shorter book than Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize winning tome, but it does pack a punch, as it chronicles the careers of Mr. Moses and Mrs. Jacobs, who'd clash over development issues in Lower Manhattan. It serves as a comprehensive introduction to both Moses and Jacobs, and is surprisingly even handed in its treatment of both. Caro's book has made Moses such an infamously easy target for scorn, one who stands in poor light to contemporary sensibilities. Jacobs's philosophy aged well, while Moses's will to power has not. The author avoids the cheap shots, and in doing so, presents a book which is worthwhile to read.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is good. I read both Death and Life and the Power Broker years ago, so this was a good addition. While I think the author leans toward the Team Jane side, I found the book to be mostly neutral regarding what Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses were each trying to accomplish, which I appreciated. This was most pronounced in the afterward, when he noted how cities need the large scale infrastructure that Moses developed (what would New York be like if we had no highways, playgrounds, or access to beaches?) and that opposition to any change at all is myopic and counterproductive. What we need is a balance of development and organic community preservation, but striking a balance is often very logistically difficult to accomplish.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is of somewhat limited interest. It would have been much better as a magazine article (or as a chapter in "The Power Broker"!). Jane Jacobs had good ideas, countering modernism in urban redevelopment. She also perhaps started modern NIMBYism, and it is disappointing that Flint doesn't wrestle with this aspect of her legacy. Instead, Flint largely sees unattainable housing prices as a good thing, evidence that Jacobs's vision was highly desirable. Repeatedly, Flint cites the fact that the Greenwich Village neighborhood is now priced for celebrities and designer boutiques as a *good thing*. "The Power Broker" gives a better portrait of Moses.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about NYC, urban planning, and of course, Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. I didn't know any of this history previously, but now am considering reading both Jane Jacobs' books and the Robert Caro biography of Robert Moses.

[Doug Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, well-written & well-researched book. Anybody with an interest in New York City, big city politics or urban design should find it worth reading. I came to it having read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and possessing the typical view of Jacobs as combination savant & saint, and Moses as evil incarnate for his ruthless transformations of the NYC landscape in favor of cars and trucks. But the book provides a more nuanced view.

First, I was surprised to learn that Jacobs's famous book wasn't the factor that changed hearts and minds and stemmed the tide of expressway-building by stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway plan. It was really Jacobs's ability as a rabble-rouser (even disrupting public meetings and at times deploying children to get her points across) that finally caused the LOMEX plan to be dropped. So my saintly image of Jacobs was taken down a peg, replaced by an even higher respect for her raw ability to get things done - by hook or by crook.

Second, Moses turns out to have had a mixed impact on NYC and a more interesting personality than I expected. He built numerous parks and "parkways" that are still used and appreciated today, for example. He apparently wasn't corrupt in a financial sense, despite being the most powerful unelected official in the city. He lived a fairly modest life, though he did use a chauffeur and never had a driver's license. He was not necessarily a bad guy; he was more misguided, obsessed with ensuring that middle class families could drive their cars and trucks around the city without gridlock. At times he seemed to live in a fantasy world: for example, he included Walt Disney of all people in the proposed designs of LOMEX, envisioning a lovely Disneyland-like sinuous roadway high above SoHo, hardly impacting the street life below but magically eliminating blight.

It's interesting to imagine how Jacobs and Moses would be viewed if they were operating today. Jacobs would fit right in with both educated moderates who want gradual, reasoned & documented improvements and with a sizable portion of the more angry, passionate groups agitating for immediate changes. I wonder what she would think of the climate protesters who have recently glued themselves to artworks, thrown soup on Van Goghs, etc. I like to think that she would consider this type of action beyond the pale and counter-productive - but I'm not sure now that I've read this book.

Moses on the other hand, with his obsession with cars, trucks & suburbia and decisions made by a cadre of elite-educated white men in back rooms, would be a square peg in a round hole in today's world.

On a side note, given how the West Village, SoHo & Nolita have changed over time and become the home of extremely expensive apartments, galleries and fancy shops, it's very hard to imagine that these neighborhoods were once considered blighted and candidates for Moses-style urban renewal. The gentrification that has occurred is in some ways an improvement of course, but as usual the lower middle class, e.g. dockworkers, have been forced out of the neighborhoods that they once called home. This is a development that Jane Jacobs didn't foresee - but neither did Moses.

Another side note: for a more personal and emotional book that discusses similar themes, try Donna Florio's "Growing Up Bank Street", about the author's life spent on Bank Street in the West Village.

Anyway a well-done book & recommended for anybody who loves New York and/or urban history.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title and subtitle of Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City are rather misleading, as the combat is not as direct as suggested, in large part because Jacobs considered Moses too small a force for her to be specifically concerned with—dealing instead with larger abstractions of theory as represented by projects of his—whereas Moses couldn’t be bothered with anyone’s concerns at all. In a way, Anthony Flint doesn’t seem directly engaged with them, either; the two ostensible principals seem more symbols of old and new meeting at an inflection point in urban planning, transportation planning, and housing planning, and even so, Flint doesn’t do much to elucidate either movement, let alone the two people used as symbols thereof.

In between focusing on three primary projects regarding which Jacobs and Moses were opposed (two of which are described in the acknowledgments as having ben identified by a fellow scholar as “particular turning points,” but which never feel like such here, perhaps because the book’s narrow focus on these turning points alone offers no context in which for them to exist as such), Flint does provide incidental biographies of each party, but if anything, Wrestling with Moses engages more with the books—Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Robert Caro’s The Power Broker—that respectively exemplify Jacobs and Moses than with the individuals themselves. While he acknowledges Death and Life on the first page of his introduction, it takes him until page 142 to acknowledge The Power Broker, and for attribution, at a point long after so much direct lifting on information that I had assumed attribution was not forthcoming. (The Power Broker is first brought to mind even long before much of the extensive use of material therefrom, when at the end of the introduction, Flint mentions Jacobs’s influence in stalling a Moses project for seven years, which went curiously unmentioned in the entirety of that book.)

In some ways, the single insurmountable frustration that disrupted the completion of Moses’s supposed vision provides the happy moment of victory that I kept hoping for in The Power Broker but was largely denied until nearly the very end, although that effect is undercut somewhat by the circumstances’ giving Moses an eternal out to say that he was not given a full chance to succeed, a laughable claim given the power accorded him. Flint’s almost desperate attempts to temper the apparent goodness of Jacobs and evil of Moses are presumably to allow the two to meet on more common ground (despite this, the pairing can only come off as David vs. Goliath). Sometimes this requires him to make arguments on Moses’ behalf that lack credulity, and it can be unclear in such cases if he is making the argument or suggesting that Moses would; he also sometimes seems to adopt Moses talking point rather than a realistic view of the realities of a situation, and while it’s one thing if he is meaning to replicate the nature of the dialogue that was occurring, it’s not clear that that’s his aim. This strenuous “even-handedness” (really deck-stacking in order to allow the artificial balance of imbalanced ideologies) would read as sophistic if not for the fact that Flint doesn’t even seem convinced by his own arguments, making it hard to feel as if he means for his audience to be.

[CTEP]

For May’s book club I read Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City, by Anthony Flint.It was recommended to me by the head of my planning program for the fall amongst several other works, but they’re also very relevant to my current service as I continue to explore understanding of the nature of urban community as I see it in my everyday service.

The book is a history of the conflicts between Robert Moses, an urban planning bureaucrat, and Jane Jacobs, a local activist and defender against urban renewal. While the author doesn’t overtly talk much about how issues of housing discrimination factor into the stories, for anyone interested in the history of housing and development this book presents a strong view of the problematic origins of 20th century development. Flint begins by relating the histories of both Jacobs and Moses, who come from very different worlds, one an oxford educated bureaucrat and the other a mother eschewing the credentialing of formal education. Jacobs and Moses encounter each other earlier through a fight over the redevelopment plans for Washington Square in NYC, a historied and eclectic park that Jacobs ultimately protects from the reaching arm of Moses. Jacobs fights then to protect hers and other neighborhoods from other development projects labeled under the justification of “urban renewal.”

Moses and other planners of the time followed a modernist consideration of planning that held areas should be separated by discrete uses. He and others imagined a perfectly organized and understandable city, organized in a manner like you might imagine envisioned in World’s Fairs, Disneyworld’s Epcot center, etc. Jacobs, a student of the city through experience, saw that such ideas led only to desolate and negative places, neglected buildings, rising crime, and more. In contrast, she found that infinite and organic diversity was what helped areas to thrive, and she penned these thoughts in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (next on my reading list).

I see a lot of what Jacob speaks of at Waite House and in the Phillips neighborhood in general. I feel like Moses transported to today might say some of the same things about Phillips that he said about the neighborhoods in the book, that he might see the struggles of the neighborhood and declare it needs to be wiped clean in the name of Urban Renewal. I also see that Phillips holds some of the strengths that Jacobs talks about. Phillips’ diversity is a huge asset, and mixed use of residential, commercial, nonprofit, and more makes it a lively and active place capable of organization and improvement in a way Moses’ communities failed to find.

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming -- and, right down to the title, echoing a headline from the end of Thomas PYNCHON'S Gravity's RAINBOW (certainly more than Atlas Shrugged), which is to say, "ORPHEUS PUTS DOWN HARP" (which is to say, the manager of the Orpheus Theater in L.A., one Richard M. Zhlubb, he of the five-o'clock-shadow, "the most ominous of all o'clock shadows," or something, is denigrating the mouth-harp, that is, that portable harmonica, and you know, trouble ensues, or boy will it, if those miscreants don't listen to reason, etc. etc. Law and Order you know the drill ... ): This is where the gods meet us and they are us, no-one else to blame. Of course this is a David-and-Goliath story, but it's also one of the Old Order realizing it's not in charge anymore: Like Oedipus, the horror is "who did this ... it was me??" Like Jacobs herself, we can see that it's just a bunch of grown boys playing Monopoly, Risk, or Stratego, and not realizing it doesn't work out well when they just plop things down without even checking ... but this, of course, is the opening pages of Death and Life of American Cities, as is evident to anyone who's glanced at them (as I have -- I haven't yet finished it, but I've read her Systems of Survival, which her niece said here on Goodreads was her favorite of her books; she told me here). The difference being all these voices cropped up and crowed aloud, slowing the progress of something designed in some room until it fell off the game board. And that's because a lot more people have voices there days than just a few -- even if you have to manage them, funnel them into a concert or a symphony that makes sense.

A great leap forward, and very affably handled. A good job done by Flint -- kudos all around.

Really!

Honest.

It's good ...

#jensnyderisSHIT

#BELIEVEthis

#HONEST

#askTIMMOSSMAN

#iHATEher

#idontKNOWher

#shedoesntKNOWme

#herPARENTSneither

#HA

[Ethan Lapointe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good primer on Jacobs and Moses if you're a bit too time-crunched to dive headlong into the daunting tome of Caro's The Power Broker. My feelings on the book were marred in part by the fact that my secondhand copy had been highlighted by somebody who had used this as their primer. Flint's almost nostalgic telling highlights Jacobs as a paladin against an overmatching, malicious Moses, and in many cases she should be construed as such. It was easy to find these cases as my book's prior owner had literally highlighted them as well. In its surface-level approach, Flint's book undersells the meaning of their dueling visions, and its consequences. It is not until the epilogue where the nuance creeps through.

Yes, Jacobs "won" against Moses in their present, as the previous owner/highlighter always checked off, and yet much of Moses's work and legacy still stands. The bitter contradiction to Jacobs's philosophy today is that undoing the works of Moses is made harder by her position. Jacobs's stance is not only effective at stopping highways from being built, but also from being taken down. Her victory could be seen as contributing to the modern malaise of American urban planning. It is a victory that perpetuates conditions that may very well lead to the next Moses, the next misguided figure who sees themselves as the bold, earth-moving hero that heeds no protest on their quest to transform cities.

This was the message I had taken away from reading other texts on the issue, but here the mention in the afterword feels like an afterthought.

[Nouman Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as part of a study circle, and what a brilliant introduction to urban activism! The narrative folds dramatically and keeps you hooked. The battle between Moses and Jane is well-told and resonates with you, even if you aren't aware of NYC's geography. Along with 'The Emperor of all Maladies', this book is going to be on the list of non-fiction recommendations for beginners. Someone with even slightest interest in how cities function and what development should look like should read this brilliant book.

In context of Karachi and what has transpired here in last few years in the name of development, it has several key learnings to offer. Our idea of development is rotten and outdated and serves elite. The book mentions in several places that today's America has warmed up to the urban principles of Jane Jacobs’s, but her ideas were considered radical and ridiculous and even dangerous back in 60s. Unfortunately, for Karachi, even today, her idea of what development should look like is radical. From public to the city officials, everyone is hellbent on making Karachi a concrete jungle, riddled with high-rise buildings and pedestrian free roads and fancy shopping malls and in general, city planning revolves around facilitating traffic - all the elements which book severely criticizes.

May Karachi gets its own Jane Jacob's soon and get rid of its many Robert Moses.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tl;dr: If you've read The Power Broker, give this book a quick skim and the epilogue your close attention. If not, just go read The Power Broker and/or The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

---
This is best read as a companion book to The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Without that context, it's hard to grasp what's at stake, why any of this matters, or the full picture of where New York and Robert Moses were at that time. If you HAVE read The Power Broker, it's a quick supplement to a piece of the Moses story that there simply wasn't room for Caro to cover in his masterpiece.

The best part of this book was honestly the epilogue, where Flint provides a slightly more nuanced look at Moses' legacy. Anyone finishing The Power Broker (myself included) will be convinced Moses is the root of all evil; Flint points out, with the retrospective available to us today, that the Jacobs legacy has spawned its own problems, and that Moses - the master of actually being able to get things done - would be cheered today if he could, for example, build a glorious new public transit system, regardless of who has to be displaced in the process.

This book also struggled from being unable to decide if it was a biography of Jane Jacobs, a biography of Robert Moses, or a tale of community activism.

[Dewey Decimal Challenge: 711 - Area Planning - Civic Art]

[Brennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you'd prefer a historical overview or more of a biographical read for both Jacobs and Moses, then give this review an additional star.

I liked this book, but I felt it would belabor some parts of the story. Long after you've taken then point, you are still 20 pages from the end of the chapter. This is maybe my problem, not the books. In general, it was well-written, and a great collection of the history of that time. I read a good deal of urban planning news articles, and discuss with people whenever I can - this book fills a lot of holes I hadn't picked up in my travels on the topic. Again, if you're here for history, this book is great.

If you also read frequently about UP, then I'd maybe pass on this and instead attempt Power Broker. But if you're not interested in climbing the 1,300+ page mountain, this books is a more digestible read. And it's 100% recommended for people outside of the discourse with a passing interest in the subject.

[Conor · Rating 3 out of 5]

The twin biography of activist Jane Jacobs and master builder Robert Moses, “wrestling with Moses” by Anthony Flint gives a blow-by-blow of three destructive projects imposed on the people of New York by urban planners in the mid 1900s. This detailed account shows how activists may organize against the powers that be, and the gradual radicalization of one woman. Unfortunately it neglects coverage of other urban renewal projects such as the cross Bronx expressway which displaced hundreds of poor mostly black families.

Written in a voice halfway between a sportscaster and a stoic Anthony gives a second pass over the headlines of the day. More of a historical text than an urbanist work proper, for an introduction to urbanism see “Death and Life” by Jane Jacobs herself, but if already familiar, open this for great depth of these most famous of figures.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clearly written narrative about how Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs battled over Washington Square Park and the Lower Manhattan Expressway. It doesn't assume any previous familiarity with Moses or Jacobs, and manages to provide a concise intro on their backgrounds and personalities. I hadn't realized how controversial Jacobs' perspective on urban planning was at the time, since so much of her ethos is accepted as fact now.
I also liked that there was nuance around both of their legacies in the end — the influence of The Power Broker means that many of Moses' accomplishments have been diminished, and Jacobs didn't have a solution for gentrification and her model for citizen activism has evolved into NIMBYism. We need parks, roads, and bridges, as well as the richness of urban communities and historic preservation.

[Zak Yudhishthu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty enjoyable and balanced history of Jane Jacobs’s multiple fights with Robert Moses. The book makes for a great sequel to the Power Broker, though definitely not a replacement — you should read the Caro first.

The book deserves particular props for avoiding pure Jacobs hagiography, engaging with some pretty interesting contemporaneous critiques of her work as well as modern critiques of her legacy. Of course, it also gives plenty of positive perspectives on Jacobs, and rightly so.

Still, the reason this book gets four stars instead of five stars is that it mostly covers very well-trotted ground, even while unveiling some little-known details of Jacobs’s time as a Greenwich village organizer. This story is one of the most mythologized in American urban history, which makes it a difficult narrative to cover. This book does so competently without blowing me away.

[Philip Glanville · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cowards way out - partly as I couldn't face 'wrestling with Caro', however I also saw this in the Tenement Museum in New York and couldn't resist this book. Having watched Straight Line Crazy and seen several documentaries on both Jacobs and Moses, this book still had tonnes to offer and perhaps it was the glimpses into their personal lives and interactions with wider New York politics that I enjoyed just as much as the clashes between them and their views of the city. It feels like a real labour of love for Flint and that shows in how he almost creates a novel like sense across the book. A wonderful read for all urbanists (and wanna be ones), and leaves you with a balanced sense of both Jacobs and Moses and the environment they created.

[Mysteryfan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at urban development and citizen activism. It made a good counterpoint to the urban theories I've been reading lately. It packs a lot of information into a small number of pages and provides notes and a bibliography. I was familiar with a lot of the politics because I grew up on Long Island. Robert Moses was a well-connected, powerful politician and Jane Jacobs was a citizen activist. She mobilized enough residents to block two infrastructure projects that would have paved over much of Lower Manhattan. It's also interesting to note how relevant the issues are today, e.g. congestion pricing for driving in NYC. I liked how the epilogue pointed out how far the interpretations have changed. Citizen activism has swung to NIMBYism but revitalization is strong.

[Stephen Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read both The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, and The Power Broker, Robert Caro's wonderful biography of Robert Moses, I found Flint's book an enjoyable review of Jacobs' efforts to stop three of Moses' proposed projects, and Moses' never ending efforts to breath new life into them. Flint's writing style is excellent, descriptive, but to the point. Short and too the point, this book offers insights and detail not available on the other books I've read.

A fun read for anyone with an interest in city planning and urban affairs.

[Susan Welch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous

What a terrific book and story! I love cities and am curious as to what makes a great city. This book has helped me to better understand the challenges of creating and maintaining a livable and dynamic environment. I realize that owe a debit of gratitude to Jane Jacobs and her work to preserve New York City and the influence her work has had on cities all over the world. This book is especially helpful in putting her work in historical context and her influence for years to come.

[Mary]

I didn't read the whole book but would hate to put it in the "abandoned" category. It had moe information than I needed or wanted in backgroun of the history of Washington Square Park for exaample. Interesting that our son who read the 700 page biography that Caro wrote of Robert Moses says that Jacobs is not mentioned. She certainly was his rival over preserving NYC neighborhoods with their bodegas, shops, restaurants, etc.