Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

Writer/Journalist/Urban Activist: Jane Jacobs is the main subject of this documentary as it focuses on her battles against rapid redevelopment headed by urban planner Robert Moses in her home city of New York during the 1950s and 1960s.

This film ably conveys Jacobs' intelligence in various ways: her unusual yet fascinating observations on how cities truly work (there is order within the 'chaos'); and her abilities to organize activist responses to proposals that negate city living. Her views and philosophies are expressed in various ways. They include audio and televised footage as well as the narration (by Marisa Tomei) from Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (1961).

The viewer could end up feeling a mixture of optimism as well as pessimism from the history exposed in this film. On the one hand, Jacobs' victories (with much help) give hope. But there is despair after viewing the chronicling of "slum" neighbourhoods with vibrant communities being destroyed and replaced with housing projects that caused more problems than they solved. One feels grief not only for the loss of vibrant communities but also for the historical buildings that were destroyed - and replaced with bland ones.

Jacobs moved to Toronto (where I've lived for over twenty years) in 1968 and was involved in a successful campaign to stop an expressway being built in the downtown area in the early 1970s. One can only wonder (and shudder) what she would think of the current state of this city since her passing in 2006 at the age of eighty-nine.

She believed in progress as long as it mixed the old with the new and kept street life active. Downtown Toronto is losing many small shops, restaurants, and bars as they are being torn down for more and more massive glass condos. (It's strange to think that such blandness will be considered 'historical architecture' in the future.) During this process, sidewalks adjacent to the future condo sites have been reduced. So much for encouraging the street life so well lauded in this documentary. Also, in regard to condo buildings that have shops at ground level, they seem to have very little activity within them. (A similar point is made in "Citizen Jane" about parks near housing projects that were frequently empty.)

Director Matt Tyrnauer has used the right mix of interviews, old footage, and music to make a fine film even for those of us who have minimal knowledge of urban issues. The footage of street life goes back to earlier decades - even as far back as the 1930s. The music by Jane Antonia Cornish has an edge that is usually used in thrillers. Perhaps, this is to imply that the monstrous mindset of the 50s and 60s has an equally evil grandchild (condo-ization aka vulgarization) in our current times that is taking over our lives today.....and we're all in that scary movie!

In any case, this movie is encouraging me to read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". From the quotes in this movie, the book still sounds relevant today - more than half a century since it was published.

10/26/17. Being a native New Yorker I enjoyed the nostalgic footage of the '60s and '70s. I had no idea of how urban development and urban renewal was going to destroy the fabric of what made up New York. So, it was good to hear about people such as Jacobs. What most people probably never knew was that they were going to tear down Grand Central Station. YES, the iconic Grand Central Station had not Jackie O stepped in and saved it. So, NYC owed its heart not to the builders of skyscrapers but those who felt that NY was more than just lifeless concrete and glass structures.

Citizen Jane documents the battle between Urban Renewal and Urban Preservation, focusing specifically on post-WWII era New York City. It's painted as a classic David v Goliath story in which reporter/activist Jane Jacobs pits herself against the well-connected developer Robert Moses. It isn't a particularly suspenseful documentary - if you know anything about the current layout of Manhattan, you know the outcome - but it's still a highly educational piece that highlights many of the ongoing debates in the world of urban planning.

Those living in small towns or rural areas may not get too much out of this doc, but anyone living in a major city will easily relate to its themes. If I have one complaint, it's that the filmmakers worked a little too hard to paint Moses as a villain. They touch a bit on his early idealism, but then lean into the portrayal of him as a greedy bully. Perhaps he was simply blind to the damage he was doing in his quest to re-build the slums and tenements? I suppose it's a compliment to say that this documentary left me wanting to know more.

This is a fantastic biopic about Jane Jacobs, a writer and feminist from the 20th century who is apparently most remembered for her activism that saved entire neighborhoods in New York City. I am not from New York, but I was generally intrigued by the focus on historical neighborhoods, which incidentally factored into a lot of apartment horror in the 1960s and 70s.

Citizen Jane is in reality much more heavily focused on sociology, social justice and urban planning than historical architecture but it is deeply engaging as a documentary topic if you are interested in how societies work together to create cities, rather than envisioning the city creating the society.

I would like to know more about Jane Jacobs. Her husband was an architect, so that serves to explain some of her more intellectual observations on building design. The entire subject is so complex that I think only someone with her keen penetrating social intelligence partnered with someone with a more esoteric interest in design could be the right person in the right place at the right time to save lower Manhattan and SoHo from unethical developers.

This is less a film more a hagiography. It makes accusations which may indeed have some merit but does nothing to try to challenge them.

For example racial removal is cited as a reason for slum clearance but there is no counter to express the fact many project are what kept black communities from being erased by gentrification.

Again Pruitt Igoe is cited that it was designed by a team that was made of of far more minority ethic architects than was usual at the time countering the remote whiteman image the documentary likes to play too. It ignores as is that racial segregation was forced upon the the plan and the rather important fact that black tenants where forced to move into the block when it was unfinished with some apartments lacking even plumbing.However the biggest flaw is looking at what happened to the neighborhood post demolition and what happened to the nearby neighborhoods that where not redeveloped and why the lives of the citizens have got so much worst since the development was demolished.

Its is on the whole a very middle class view of city life, the projects are dismissed as bad most one suspects because the are not the demise of the middle class but doesn't look to see if anyone has anything nice to say about the project that cannot be all bad is the culture they have spawned from Hip-Hop to wave after wave of fantastic black film directors who produce the kind of films Hollywood can only dream of. While obviously Hip-Hop and a few good films don't mean the project are therefore a utopian dream they do at least prove that nor are they the social void Jacobs would have you believe.

The biggest flaw however is what it fails to do is look for an example where knowingly or not, Jane Jacobs advice has in essences been how that city has developed. Their are of course plenty of examples that have been far closer to the Jane Jacobs model such as Paris which has a city centre that is a upper middle class ghetto or indeed London where some districts have lost all their life not through redevelopment by preservation and flows of capital and property investment for people who leave the places mostly vacant leaving immaculate ghost towns. One of the most tragic developments in our modern times has been the slow death of the city of Venice which has declined from one of the worlds great bustling hubs to an open air museum. Maybe if Robert Moses had been hired to build a highway down the gran canal and concrete tower blocks jutting out the lagoon the place would have a bit more life and a few less tourists today.

It also fails to look at the cities in China it moans about and one wonders if anyone involved has ever been. Are they really soulless? In my experience the city of Hong Kong mile after mile of high-rises and shopping malls is one of the most trilling places on earth and yet the very similar building typography in Singapore provoked in me only boredom. its true as stated it people that make cities not buildings yet, the most striking think about both this film and indeed the Death and Life of the Great American City is while they talk about how much buildings should be people focused, that's all they do. Its a mantra that isn't really explored in anymore depth than the humanism of Le Corbusier and his beautifully drawn stick men.

All in all this film is just one generation of urban thinkers giving itself a nice pat on the back at the expense of the previous.