Citizen Jane

The canonization of Jane Jacobs continues. Increasingly, for those occupying midlevel positions on the spectrum of urban gentrification—between the original tenement poor and the eventual investment banker—the community activist Jacobs has taken on an increasingly important role as a sort of Mother Courage of urban pioneerism. This was not always the case. Despite her intractable (and ultimately career-ending) battles with the New York City planner Robert Moses, Jacobs did not rate a mention in Robert Caro's monumental 1974 Moses biography, The Power Broker. Studies by Roberta Brandes Gratz and Anthony Flint have subsequently gone some way in righting that wrong. Foundations have been established in her honor; awards are given in her name. An opera, Joshua Frankel's A Marvellous Order (2016), has been written about Moses's and Jacobs's entanglements. We can now add to this list the documentary Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, directed by Matt Tyrnauer and funded largely by the Rockefeller Foundation (longtime custodians of Jacobs's work and legacy

Ancient history · Art history · Battle · Biography · Courage · Honor · Order (exchange · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Victory · History · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law