Cit­i­zen Jane: Bat­tle for the City

New York City is known as the place where dreams come true. But imag­ine if, instead of the roman­tic leafy neigh­bour­hoods we see in movies, vis­i­tors were greet­ed with an abun­dance of bru­tal­ist con­crete façades. Direc­tor and jour­nal­ist Matt Tyrnauer’s Cit­i­zen Jane: Bat­tle for the City recounts a time of rebel­lion and defi­ance in the domain of US town plan­ning fol­low­ing the World War Two. It places par­tic­u­lar focus on two of the biggest rivals when it came to the task of res­ur­rect­ing of New York City.

In the blue cor­ner we have Robert Moses, one of the most influ­en­tial and con­tro­ver­sial names involved with the restruc­tur­ing of the city. He was an unfeel­ing pow­er bro­ker intent on gut­ting poor­er areas and replac­ing them with ugly, imper­son­al hous­ing estates. And in the red cor­ner is Jane Jacobs, who was deter­mined to lead a fight against what was described as the ​‘dehu­man­i­sa­tion’ of the city.

It’s pret­ty clear who the film­mak­ers are root­ing for from the off. As the sto­ry devel­ops, it’s traces Jacobs’ argu­ments for regen­er­a­tion, which stem back to her feel­ing that neigh­bour­hoods through­out the city were, and still are, con­stant­ly evolv­ing. How­ev­er, Moses believed that urban renew­al was the only way to ​‘cut out the can­cer’ of vis­i­ble pover­ty that blight­ed areas of the city.

Through­out the film we see the pair lock rhetor­i­cal horns and mil­i­tant­ly stand up for what they believed would ben­e­fit the city. Moses dis­plays a cocky demeanour, espe­cial­ly when he sneers while defend­ing an exten­sion of Fifth Avenue through New York’s beloved Wash­ing­ton Square Park. It speaks of the idea that some peo­ple use the excuse of pub­lic ben­e­fit as a way to hide their own, more self­ish perspective.

The tim­ing of the film’s ini­tial release last sum­mer seemed to con­ve­nient­ly coin­cide with the US.election, prompt­ing a lot of com­par­isons between the films two com­peti­tors and the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. Trump’s even­tu­al ascen­dance only enforces the idea of Moses’ sly and vil­lain­ous character.

Moses’ archi­tec­tur­al efforts are still employed in areas today, and towards the end of the film we see the city council’s deci­sion to decline his express­way pro­pos­al and his sub­se­quent res­ig­na­tion. It’s made clear that Jacobs pre­vailed in her hero­ic attempts to let the city and its sub­urbs sur­vive. The uplift­ing words quot­ed from Jacobs at the end of the film per­fect­ly encap­su­late its inspi­ra­tional message.