Thank God for Jane Jacobs the Highway Slayer
Jane Jacobs' legacy is so broad and complex I'm not going to attempt a big thinkpiece to mark her 100th birthday. In lieu of something long and wordy, I've got two short paragraphs and some images of the Robert Moses road monsters she slew in the 1960s.
By
Ben Fried
12:33 PM EDT on May 4, 2016
Jane Jacobs’ legacy is so broad and complex I’m not going to attempt a big thinkpiece to mark her 100th birthday. In lieu of something long and wordy, I’ve got two short paragraphs and some images of the Robert Moses road monsters she slew in the 1960s.
Car-centric planning was inimical to the things Jacobs valued most about cities — complexity, human energy, social contact. Her conception of the “erosion of cities” and “attrition of cars” clearly permeates Streetsblog’s coverage today. What a blessing that she was born, moved to New York, and led the uprising against these city-devouring road projects.
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
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