CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY

CITIZEN JANE: BATTLE FOR THE CITY

Once upon a time, there was an urban envisionist named Robert Moses whose plans for low income neighborhoods were a forerunner to Donald Trumps idea for plowing under the poor. His ideas included running a highway through what is now New York's Greenwich Village. The planned highway was the Lower Manhattan Expressway and it would have meant the demise of Washington Square - sight of New York's Washington Square Arch.

His concepts for urban renewal wound up being blue prints for the construction of I-95 through the once thriving community of Overtown in Miami, Seattle's portion of I-5 through that's city's oldest working class neighborhood, Detroit's I-375 that wiped out the thriving Black Bottom neighborhood...all were built with dire consequences for the neighborhoods.

Author Jane Jacobs was an outspoken critic of Robert Moses and urban renewal in the 1960's. After writing her popular book Death and Life of Great American Cities, she help lead a grass roots effort to stop the obliteration of Greenwich Village - mainly because she lived there.

Director Matt Tyrnauer's discusses the long public battle between Jacobs and Moses that put her on the forefront to stop the destruction of neighborhoods for the construction of highways. It is a topic that is viable even today as many cities are starting to remove those very same highways and restore the residential aspects of the neighborhoods. Most of the expressways have already outlived their usefulness and are obsolete.

But the film does little more than review the efforts of Ms Jacobs with the use of footage and talking heads. It makes a weak attempt to connect those efforts to today's environment.

"Citizen Jane: Battle For the City" is a film that people interested in how ambitious city planning can negatively impact social progress. -- GEOFF BURTON

GEOFF BURTON

RETURN TO CINEMATREK HOME