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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:07,200 [Ambience] 2 00:00:12,300 --> 00:00:15,300 [indistinct chatter] 3 00:00:42,300 --> 00:00:44,500 [typewriter clacking] 4 00:00:57,100 --> 00:00:59,100 [instrumental music] 5 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:14,100 Cities are, in many ways, the greatest invention 6 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:16,200 that human beings have brought to the world. 7 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:23,000 Cities have been expanding 8 00:01:23,100 --> 00:01:26,400 and urbanization has been expanding on the globe 9 00:01:26,500 --> 00:01:28,200 in an exponential fashion. 10 00:01:33,100 --> 00:01:36,100 Most extraordinarily, we are urbanizing people 11 00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:38,000 on the planet, at maybe 12 00:01:38,100 --> 00:01:41,800 one and a half million people every week 13 00:01:41,900 --> 00:01:44,000 In less than 2 months 14 00:01:44,100 --> 00:01:46,400 there'll be the equivalent to another Los Angeles 15 00:01:46,500 --> 00:01:48,500 metropolitan area on this planet. 16 00:01:50,100 --> 00:01:54,400 This scale and speed of urbanization 17 00:01:54,500 --> 00:01:57,600 has never, ever happened in human history. 18 00:01:57,700 --> 00:01:59,600 This is the first time. 19 00:02:03,900 --> 00:02:07,300 When you look at what is being built in cities 20 00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:10,600 you have endless, endless 21 00:02:10,700 --> 00:02:14,700 row after row of homogenizing towers. 22 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:20,600 And you see more and more highways. 23 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:35,500 At this moment, you're going to shape the cities 24 00:02:35,600 --> 00:02:37,300 for generations to come. 25 00:02:38,900 --> 00:02:42,300 People need to realize this is an opportunity 26 00:02:42,400 --> 00:02:44,100 which will never come again. 27 00:02:50,400 --> 00:02:52,500 There are a couple of ways of approaching 28 00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:54,500 the design of cities. 29 00:02:54,600 --> 00:02:57,500 The question is always who decides.. 30 00:02:59,300 --> 00:03:01,100 ...what the physical form will be.. 31 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:06,200 ...how the city is going to function 32 00:03:06,300 --> 00:03:09,200 and who is going to live in the city. 33 00:03:17,500 --> 00:03:20,300 In order to understand what's happening today.. 34 00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:24,100 ...we need to think about 2 great figures 35 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:26,800 in the middle of the 20th century 36 00:03:26,900 --> 00:03:29,600 who embodied the struggle for the city. 37 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:37,900 The legendary power broker Robert Moses 38 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:40,900 represented the authority of the great man 39 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,900 who was gonna come into the city with his carving knife 40 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,000 and clear away the cancerous tissue.. 41 00:03:48,100 --> 00:03:50,000 [Crash] 42 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:56,100 ...and replace it with the shiny implements 43 00:03:56,200 --> 00:03:58,000 of modernist planning. 44 00:03:59,900 --> 00:04:02,100 Uh, you have to move a lot of people out of the way 45 00:04:02,200 --> 00:04:04,200 of a big housing, uh, project 46 00:04:04,300 --> 00:04:06,900 or, uh, slum clearance project. 47 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:09,400 A lot of 'em are not going to like it. 48 00:04:09,500 --> 00:04:12,800 Many of them are misinformed. 49 00:04:12,900 --> 00:04:16,400 In opposition to the homogenizing clarity 50 00:04:16,500 --> 00:04:18,600 of Moses was Jane Jacobs. 51 00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:23,700 I have very little faith, uh 52 00:04:23,800 --> 00:04:28,800 i -- in, in even the kind of person 53 00:04:28,900 --> 00:04:32,500 who, uh, prefers to take a large overall 54 00:04:32,600 --> 00:04:34,500 uh, view of things. 55 00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:37,300 Jacobs was an outsider. 56 00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:39,500 She believed the city is not about buildings. 57 00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:41,300 The city is about people. 58 00:04:41,400 --> 00:04:45,100 It is about public spaces and the street 59 00:04:45,200 --> 00:04:46,900 and she stood up for that. 60 00:04:48,300 --> 00:04:50,700 She evolved both a theory 61 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:52,500 of what made a good and just city 62 00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,500 and a theory of opposition 63 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:59,500 to the kind of planning practice that Moses represented. 64 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:02,700 There's a prudishness, a fear of life 65 00:05:02,900 --> 00:05:07,300 a wish to direct things from some uncontaminated refuge 66 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:10,200 that is part and parcel of their bad plan. 67 00:05:12,100 --> 00:05:15,300 They were famously at odds with each other. 68 00:05:15,400 --> 00:05:18,100 It really did become a war between opposing forces. 69 00:05:20,300 --> 00:05:23,400 Today we're still fighting these battles 70 00:05:23,500 --> 00:05:24,900 across the world. 71 00:05:49,500 --> 00:05:52,400 When we look across the spectrum of all the problems 72 00:05:52,500 --> 00:05:55,800 generated by urbanization 73 00:05:55,900 --> 00:05:59,100 there is the extraordinary realization that, my gosh 74 00:05:59,200 --> 00:06:02,000 you know, these have been problems that have been around 75 00:06:02,100 --> 00:06:03,800 for the last 100 years in cities. 76 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:06,500 New York, of course 77 00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:08,600 is the greatest example of that. 78 00:06:14,700 --> 00:06:17,000 In the 1930s 79 00:06:17,100 --> 00:06:20,300 New York was the world's greatest city, you know? 80 00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:23,200 A very special place. 81 00:06:23,300 --> 00:06:25,900 Just the exuberance of metropolitan life 82 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:28,000 in the early 20th century. 83 00:06:30,100 --> 00:06:31,600 That's, you know, the -- the great age 84 00:06:31,700 --> 00:06:34,400 of the first real great skyscrapers. 85 00:06:34,500 --> 00:06:36,600 You know, the Empire State Building 86 00:06:36,700 --> 00:06:38,800 is the very climax of that. 87 00:06:42,100 --> 00:06:44,600 But then, it all kind of crashes with The Depression. 88 00:06:46,500 --> 00:06:48,900 Through the entire decade of the '30s 89 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:50,900 it's just one problem after another. 90 00:06:54,900 --> 00:06:56,800 Down at street level 91 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:01,200 was this degraded environment. 92 00:07:01,300 --> 00:07:05,700 Slums and dirt and, and pollution 93 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:08,800 that did not fit with the glorious spires 94 00:07:08,900 --> 00:07:11,100 of the new skyscraper city. 95 00:07:13,900 --> 00:07:16,700 The city was overcrowded 96 00:07:16,800 --> 00:07:19,800 harsh, dirty, dangerous 97 00:07:19,900 --> 00:07:22,700 and infested with disease. 98 00:07:24,200 --> 00:07:26,300 Jacob Riis' famous book 99 00:07:26,400 --> 00:07:28,700 "How The Other Half Live" 100 00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:31,500 brought a lot of attention to this. 101 00:07:35,100 --> 00:07:38,100 The idea was, we will solve the city's problem 102 00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:39,900 by cleaning it up. 103 00:07:41,700 --> 00:07:46,200 Now this is a unfortunate period for the city. 104 00:07:46,300 --> 00:07:51,300 We've done an immense amount to cure these diseases 105 00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:53,300 and we have much more to do. 106 00:07:55,100 --> 00:07:57,200 Robert Moses started to work in an era 107 00:07:57,300 --> 00:08:00,100 where we had a great many people 108 00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:02,700 living in truly horrible conditions. 109 00:08:04,100 --> 00:08:07,400 He began his professional life 110 00:08:07,500 --> 00:08:10,200 in opposition to those conditions. 111 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,900 Moses emerged out of the Progressive Movement 112 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:18,400 early in the 20th century in New York. 113 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:21,700 The progressives were eager to improve the city. 114 00:08:23,400 --> 00:08:27,100 His early work in developing public parks 115 00:08:27,200 --> 00:08:31,400 and public beaches was about making life better 116 00:08:31,500 --> 00:08:33,400 for people who were not rich. 117 00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:41,700 Now if we don't clean out these slums 118 00:08:41,900 --> 00:08:43,800 the central areas are going to rot. 119 00:08:45,800 --> 00:08:50,100 And it's all nonsense to say that the problem can be solved 120 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:54,100 by rehabilitating and fixing up Old Law Tenements. 121 00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:57,100 It can't be done. 122 00:08:57,200 --> 00:08:59,200 That problem we've got to face. 123 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:13,900 Just about every progressive believed 124 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:16,700 that the way to solve the city's problems 125 00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:19,700 was to wipe the slate clean, start all over again. 126 00:09:21,500 --> 00:09:25,500 We didn't understand how high the price was 127 00:09:25,600 --> 00:09:28,500 how we were giving up so many things 128 00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:32,400 that were so very important until Jane Jacobs came along. 129 00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:46,800 Jane always would see 130 00:09:46,900 --> 00:09:49,700 in a city opportunities 131 00:09:49,800 --> 00:09:51,400 that existed there. 132 00:09:51,500 --> 00:09:55,900 She observed hints of regeneration 133 00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:58,300 hints of creativity 134 00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:01,300 hints of resourcefulness. 135 00:10:01,400 --> 00:10:04,100 It was this life spring 136 00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:07,100 of people coming to make their way. 137 00:10:07,200 --> 00:10:10,200 I think that must have shaped her approach to the city. 138 00:10:12,600 --> 00:10:14,700 I just loved coming to New York. 139 00:10:14,800 --> 00:10:16,700 It was inexhaustible. 140 00:10:18,500 --> 00:10:22,200 Just to walk around its streets and wonder at it. 141 00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:26,300 So many streets different. 142 00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:28,600 So many neighborhoods different. 143 00:10:28,700 --> 00:10:30,900 Uh, so much going on. 144 00:10:33,600 --> 00:10:36,600 She lived in Greenwich Village 145 00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:39,100 and just viscerally felt 146 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:41,200 the pulse of the city 147 00:10:41,300 --> 00:10:43,600 and was extraordinarily intuitive. 148 00:10:43,700 --> 00:10:45,800 Was extremely observant. 149 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:51,100 New York was a place where you don't have to be 150 00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:53,200 big and important and rich 151 00:10:53,300 --> 00:10:54,900 or have a great plot of land 152 00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:58,400 or a great development scheme 153 00:10:58,500 --> 00:11:01,700 or something like that to do something. 154 00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:04,400 And maybe even do something new 155 00:11:04,500 --> 00:11:06,800 and do something interesting. 156 00:11:06,900 --> 00:11:09,600 A place that has scope for all kinds of people. 157 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,300 What she saw was the soul of New York 158 00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:17,400 and what it meant to be a city 159 00:11:17,500 --> 00:11:19,500 and a city meaning a community of people. 160 00:11:42,900 --> 00:11:46,900 After the war, the most sensational thing 161 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:51,600 that came was the full flowering of this vision 162 00:11:51,700 --> 00:11:53,900 of the expressway tower city. 163 00:11:59,600 --> 00:12:04,600 This generation of idealistic city planners comes along 164 00:12:04,700 --> 00:12:07,400 and they're infected with the modernist purity idea. 165 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:12,400 And they certainly have the tools at their disposal 166 00:12:12,500 --> 00:12:15,100 to sweep away large tracts of land. 167 00:12:17,100 --> 00:12:19,400 We recognize the problems that your community faces 168 00:12:19,500 --> 00:12:21,100 and we know that you share them 169 00:12:21,200 --> 00:12:25,200 with hundreds of cities everywhere. 170 00:12:25,300 --> 00:12:27,700 Now what's involved in making your city a better place? 171 00:12:29,300 --> 00:12:32,100 Well, things like housing 172 00:12:32,200 --> 00:12:35,100 industrial development 173 00:12:35,200 --> 00:12:37,500 better streets and highways. 174 00:12:37,600 --> 00:12:40,900 Improving all these things adds up to a better city. 175 00:12:42,900 --> 00:12:45,700 I'm sure that you will see the exciting opportunity 176 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:48,700 that exists for your city to become better. 177 00:13:07,900 --> 00:13:11,800 There was this emerging idea that crowded urban areas 178 00:13:11,900 --> 00:13:14,300 where people were kind of hanging out on the street 179 00:13:14,400 --> 00:13:17,300 on their stoops, uh, where there was a lot of poverty 180 00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:20,300 that the way to deal with that problem 181 00:13:20,400 --> 00:13:22,500 was to effectively get rid of the streets. 182 00:13:24,100 --> 00:13:26,600 Was effectively to eliminate that sidewalk culture. 183 00:13:29,900 --> 00:13:32,700 And build projects that would make it impossible really 184 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:35,200 for people to kind of cluster in public in that way. 185 00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:39,600 The idea of urban renewal was that 186 00:13:39,700 --> 00:13:42,700 places that were blighted 187 00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:44,800 were a cancer on the city 188 00:13:44,900 --> 00:13:46,600 and therefore, we're gonna cut out the cancer. 189 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,300 The planners conceiving these urban renewal projects 190 00:14:03,400 --> 00:14:06,000 are doing this from that 191 00:14:06,100 --> 00:14:08,300 God-like vantage point in the sky. 192 00:14:09,700 --> 00:14:11,500 To be able to look down 193 00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:14,600 and you're able to imagine massive transformations. 194 00:14:19,100 --> 00:14:21,800 They thought that applying the logic 195 00:14:21,900 --> 00:14:24,200 of The Machine Age was gonna do that. 196 00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:35,900 The problem had to be solved by some supervisor 197 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,000 noticing where the slums were, noticing where the traffic was 198 00:14:39,100 --> 00:14:40,800 and going in and bulldozing.. 199 00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:45,900 ...and building grand projects. 200 00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:47,700 Well, we got out a brochure just now 201 00:14:47,800 --> 00:14:50,300 telling when everybody has to move. 202 00:14:50,400 --> 00:14:52,200 Robert Moses was the great embodiment of this. 203 00:15:01,700 --> 00:15:03,700 I don't honestly believe that 204 00:15:03,800 --> 00:15:07,600 considering the large numbers of people we've had to move out 205 00:15:07,700 --> 00:15:10,900 of the way of public housing and other public improvements 206 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:12,300 I don't believe that we've done 207 00:15:12,400 --> 00:15:15,400 any very substantial amount of harm. 208 00:15:15,500 --> 00:15:17,700 There must be people who are discommoded 209 00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:20,500 inconvenienced or call it what you will 210 00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:23,500 on the old theory, that you can't make an omelet 211 00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:25,400 without breaking some eggs. 212 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:41,900 After the Second World War 213 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:44,900 Robert Moses began to amass power. 214 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:47,400 He was the august parks commissioner 215 00:15:47,500 --> 00:15:49,000 in the city of New York. 216 00:15:49,100 --> 00:15:50,900 And he got power to build parkways. 217 00:15:52,700 --> 00:15:56,400 He was appointed the city's construction coordinator. 218 00:15:56,500 --> 00:15:58,700 He built thousands of apartments. 219 00:16:00,200 --> 00:16:02,400 He became urban renewal czar 220 00:16:02,500 --> 00:16:06,000 the head of the mayor's committee on slum clearance. 221 00:16:06,100 --> 00:16:08,600 By the time that Moses was running 222 00:16:08,700 --> 00:16:10,300 the Urban Renewal Program 223 00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:12,200 we had torn down 224 00:16:12,300 --> 00:16:15,700 literally thousands of tenement buildings 225 00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:17,800 in cities like New York and Chicago. 226 00:16:19,400 --> 00:16:20,900 You know, there's the, the pre-war Moses 227 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:22,200 and the post-war Moses. 228 00:16:22,300 --> 00:16:25,800 The pre-war Moses was mostly an angel. 229 00:16:25,900 --> 00:16:29,600 Post-war Moses was increasingly problematic. 230 00:16:29,600 --> 00:16:31,100 For nearly half a century 231 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:33,700 this man has pushed people around New York. 232 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:40,000 Almost anybody who is anybody has cursed him 233 00:16:40,100 --> 00:16:43,700 fought him, knuckled under to him and admired him. 234 00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:47,000 The list of his adversaries include Franklin Roosevelt 235 00:16:47,100 --> 00:16:49,600 Fanny Hurst, Elmer Davis who once compared him 236 00:16:49,700 --> 00:16:52,200 to Hitler, Walter O'Malley 237 00:16:52,300 --> 00:16:54,700 and hundreds of thousands of landowners 238 00:16:54,800 --> 00:16:56,800 who thought their property was sacred. 239 00:17:01,300 --> 00:17:03,100 Absolute power corrupts absolutely 240 00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:06,300 and Robert Moses was absolutely powerful. 241 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:08,400 So he had amassed, um, not simply 242 00:17:08,500 --> 00:17:10,100 an incredible amount of power 243 00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:12,500 but had insulated himself 244 00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:15,000 from oversight by political authorities 245 00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:16,800 and by the broader public. 246 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:21,200 Don't forget that it's one thing to buy a park 247 00:17:21,300 --> 00:17:24,100 or a great big chunk of land from one owner. 248 00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:26,600 It's quite another thing to get a right-of-way 249 00:17:26,700 --> 00:17:30,000 where hundreds and even thousands of people own it. 250 00:17:30,100 --> 00:17:33,800 You theoretically and, according to some of the, uh 251 00:17:33,900 --> 00:17:36,300 goo-goos and uplift organizations 252 00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:39,500 we ought to negotiate with every individual until he's happy. 253 00:17:39,600 --> 00:17:41,000 Can you imagine when you'd build anything 254 00:17:41,100 --> 00:17:42,500 under those conditions? 255 00:17:44,600 --> 00:17:46,500 Moses along with all of the people 256 00:17:46,600 --> 00:17:48,600 that were involved in the Urban Renewal Program 257 00:17:48,700 --> 00:17:51,700 had an agreed-upon agenda. 258 00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:55,500 People needed adequate housing 259 00:17:55,600 --> 00:17:57,800 adequate recreation facilities 260 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,100 and the motorcar was coming to America 261 00:18:01,100 --> 00:18:03,900 and it needed to be accommodated on a large scale. 262 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:05,800 That was the agenda. 263 00:18:09,800 --> 00:18:13,600 Moses became one polar view of what you could do. 264 00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:21,700 Until, all of a sudden, there was an alternative. 265 00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:24,300 Jane Jacobs has in 266 00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:26,300 "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" 267 00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:28,600 written a book that advances with the controlled 268 00:18:28,700 --> 00:18:31,400 and implacable power of a bulldozer 269 00:18:31,500 --> 00:18:34,900 against modern orthodox city planning and rebuilding. 270 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:37,000 I first began to look into city planning 271 00:18:37,100 --> 00:18:38,700 and, and housing 272 00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:41,100 and it was unbelievably awful. 273 00:18:41,200 --> 00:18:43,000 Uh, insane. 274 00:18:45,700 --> 00:18:48,800 When "Death And Life" comes out in the '60s 275 00:18:48,900 --> 00:18:51,100 it's a clarion call. 276 00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:54,500 It's Martin Luther nailing those 95 theses 277 00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:56,900 to the, to the cathedral door. 278 00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,300 The book is really the first cogent 279 00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:03,200 accessible articulation of a whole set of ideas 280 00:19:03,300 --> 00:19:07,600 that questions the mainstream thinking about our cities. 281 00:19:07,700 --> 00:19:10,000 She is constantly probing. 282 00:19:10,100 --> 00:19:12,300 By that example, she's saying 283 00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:15,000 "You, reader, you have the ability to question." 284 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:19,500 "Look what we have built. 285 00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:21,800 "Low-income projects that become 286 00:19:21,900 --> 00:19:23,500 "worse centers of delinquency 287 00:19:23,600 --> 00:19:26,300 "vandalism and general social hopelessness 288 00:19:26,400 --> 00:19:28,300 "than the slums they were supposed to replace. 289 00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:32,700 "Middle-income housing projects 290 00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:35,600 "which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation.. 291 00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:40,700 "...sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. 292 00:19:42,600 --> 00:19:46,200 "Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity 293 00:19:46,300 --> 00:19:50,500 "or try to with a vapid vulgarity. 294 00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:52,700 "Cultural centers that are unable to support 295 00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:55,600 "a good bookstore. 296 00:19:55,700 --> 00:19:58,900 "Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums 297 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:02,900 "who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. 298 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:05,300 "Expressways that eviscerate great cities. 299 00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:11,200 "This is not the rebuilding of cities. 300 00:20:11,300 --> 00:20:12,800 This is the sacking of cities." 301 00:20:28,100 --> 00:20:30,000 She was questioning orthodoxy 302 00:20:30,100 --> 00:20:32,700 and in essence saying the emperor has no clothes.. 303 00:20:34,100 --> 00:20:37,000 ...at a time when women were not welcomed 304 00:20:37,100 --> 00:20:38,900 in those kinds of environments. 305 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:47,400 If you wanna see what kind of a city can flourish 306 00:20:47,500 --> 00:20:50,900 you need to look at the cities where it's happening. 307 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:53,300 There must be a lot of diversity 308 00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:56,400 continually building up, diversity of kinds of work.. 309 00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:01,400 ...diversity of kinds of people. 310 00:21:01,500 --> 00:21:04,400 She revealed the way to create better cities 311 00:21:04,500 --> 00:21:06,400 is by working with the people who live there 312 00:21:06,500 --> 00:21:09,000 and the fabric that existed. 313 00:21:09,100 --> 00:21:11,900 The traditional fabric that people inhabited. 314 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:17,800 There have to be areas of the city 315 00:21:17,900 --> 00:21:21,600 which people use a lot, walking on the streets 316 00:21:21,700 --> 00:21:25,400 and use at all times of day. 317 00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:30,900 Jane understood neighborhoods need lots of connections. 318 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:33,600 Short blocks, lots of turns 319 00:21:33,700 --> 00:21:35,700 allowing different kinds of interaction. 320 00:21:37,500 --> 00:21:40,900 Neighborhoods need a mix of buildings, old and new. 321 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:44,900 They need diverse uses, 24/7, so that they're safer. 322 00:21:46,900 --> 00:21:51,000 Constant connection with, uh, neighborhoods around 323 00:21:51,100 --> 00:21:52,700 so that you're not isolated. 324 00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:56,300 You need public spaces that are accessible to people. 325 00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,400 It's all a great network in the city. 326 00:21:58,500 --> 00:21:59,600 It's all related. 327 00:22:02,100 --> 00:22:04,600 She observed these early, early qualities at a time 328 00:22:04,700 --> 00:22:06,000 when housing was being built 329 00:22:06,100 --> 00:22:08,400 in completely opposite direction. 330 00:22:08,500 --> 00:22:10,300 They were isolating communities. 331 00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:14,800 They were creating dead-end streets. 332 00:22:14,900 --> 00:22:16,400 They were separating work uses 333 00:22:16,500 --> 00:22:19,100 and recreation and residential uses. 334 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:23,900 She was explaining how life worked. 335 00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:39,600 Before "Death And Life," she was a journalist. 336 00:22:39,700 --> 00:22:43,500 She was a very savvy observer of human behavior 337 00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:46,900 of places, of cities. 338 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:48,900 Jacobs started writing about the city 339 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:51,700 when she was 18 years old. 340 00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:54,400 She was a secretary for a candy company. 341 00:22:54,500 --> 00:22:56,800 She was determined to write on the side. 342 00:22:56,900 --> 00:22:59,200 She did what any good enterprising writer would do. 343 00:22:59,300 --> 00:23:01,700 She got freelance jobs. 344 00:23:01,800 --> 00:23:04,600 Her curiosity was so remarkable. 345 00:23:04,700 --> 00:23:06,200 She writes about specific 346 00:23:06,300 --> 00:23:08,300 economic districts in the city. 347 00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:09,900 She does the Jewelry District 348 00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,300 she does the Fur District, she does the Flower District 349 00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:13,800 and she develops a voice. 350 00:23:13,900 --> 00:23:14,800 And where does she sell them to? 351 00:23:14,900 --> 00:23:16,400 "Vogue" magazine. 352 00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:20,400 She was writing pieces 353 00:23:20,500 --> 00:23:23,100 about what she was observing and seeing in the city. 354 00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:27,700 "The best way to plan for Downtown 355 00:23:27,800 --> 00:23:30,100 "is to see how people use it today. 356 00:23:32,100 --> 00:23:33,500 "To look for its strengths 357 00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:36,400 "and to exploit and reinforce them. 358 00:23:36,500 --> 00:23:40,000 "There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city. 359 00:23:40,100 --> 00:23:42,500 "People make it. 360 00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:46,200 "And it is to them, not buildings 361 00:23:46,300 --> 00:23:48,200 that we must fit our plans." 362 00:23:50,500 --> 00:23:53,700 "Q Magazine" accepted one of her stories 363 00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:55,700 about manhole covers. 364 00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:58,700 She discovered that they had all kinds of interesting 365 00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:01,900 uh, patterns on them, interesting lettering. 366 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:03,100 How many female journalists 367 00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:04,400 were writing about manhole covers? 368 00:24:04,500 --> 00:24:06,000 Nobody. But she was. 369 00:24:06,100 --> 00:24:08,800 She wanted to figure out how the sewer system was working. 370 00:24:08,900 --> 00:24:10,900 She's curious. She's got a really good craft. 371 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:11,800 She knows how to write. 372 00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:15,500 And she finds herself in a staff job 373 00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:17,300 with "Architectural Forum." 374 00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:27,900 Mrs. Jacobs, an associate editor 375 00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:29,700 of the magazine "Architectural Forum" 376 00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:31,600 has been a New Yorker for 27 years 377 00:24:31,700 --> 00:24:33,700 and loves it, Mrs. Jane Jacobs. 378 00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:35,600 [Applause] 379 00:24:35,700 --> 00:24:38,400 Thank you very much, Mr. Dolbier. 380 00:24:38,500 --> 00:24:42,500 One fine day, "Architectural Forum" put me on an assignment 381 00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:45,800 about some urban renewal projects that were being done. 382 00:24:47,700 --> 00:24:49,400 In Philadelphia, as a matter of fact. 383 00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:57,600 We have found, in our work in rebuilding Philadelphia 384 00:24:57,700 --> 00:25:00,500 that a central design idea, well-developed 385 00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:03,200 and clearly-expressed, can of itself 386 00:25:03,300 --> 00:25:05,400 become a major creative force 387 00:25:05,500 --> 00:25:06,800 and can make more meaningful 388 00:25:06,900 --> 00:25:08,600 the work of individual architects 389 00:25:08,700 --> 00:25:10,700 in various parts of an area. 390 00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:13,000 I found out what they had in mind 391 00:25:13,100 --> 00:25:14,400 and what they were planning to do 392 00:25:14,500 --> 00:25:15,600 and how it was going to look 393 00:25:15,700 --> 00:25:17,200 according to the drawings 394 00:25:17,300 --> 00:25:20,600 and what great things it was going to accomplish. 395 00:25:20,700 --> 00:25:21,800 I came back and wrote 396 00:25:21,900 --> 00:25:24,600 enthusiastic articles about this. 397 00:25:24,700 --> 00:25:27,300 All was well, I was in very cozy 398 00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:30,500 with the planners and the project builders. 399 00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:32,900 Anyhow, time passed 400 00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:35,800 and some of these things were actually built. 401 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:40,100 Society Hill is residential. 402 00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:42,700 The oldest part of the city, it is the site 403 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:44,400 of an intensive restoration project. 404 00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:49,300 Houses, many pre-dating the American Revolution 405 00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:51,300 slowly had grown dilapidated 406 00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,300 and had been converted to other uses. 407 00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:58,200 In addition, there was room for new 408 00:25:58,300 --> 00:26:01,800 dramatically contemporary apartment towers. 409 00:26:01,900 --> 00:26:03,200 Society Hill emerges 410 00:26:03,300 --> 00:26:05,600 as a combination of ancient and modern. 411 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,800 But they didn't work at all the way they should've worked. 412 00:26:11,900 --> 00:26:14,800 The city around them didn't react the way 413 00:26:14,900 --> 00:26:16,900 uh, theoretically the city around them 414 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:18,900 should have reacted. 415 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:22,500 She is the hyper-sensitive antennae 416 00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:24,300 you know, that's picking up something here 417 00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,500 that no one else is seeing. 418 00:26:28,700 --> 00:26:32,300 Why did stores that looked very cheerful and posed 419 00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:36,700 to, uh, be doing a great booming business in the plans 420 00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:41,000 actually go empty or languish? 421 00:26:41,100 --> 00:26:43,100 Well, I would bring these questions up 422 00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,400 with the people who had been responsible 423 00:26:45,500 --> 00:26:47,400 for the, uh, planning of these places. 424 00:26:51,300 --> 00:26:54,300 And I got quite a lot of alibis 425 00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:56,900 boiling down to, uh, "People are stupid. 426 00:26:57,000 --> 00:26:59,300 They don't do what they're supposed to do." 427 00:27:02,500 --> 00:27:04,500 And this was a great shock to me. 428 00:27:05,900 --> 00:27:09,800 Never mind highfalutin theories and so forth. 429 00:27:09,900 --> 00:27:12,200 What are we looking at? What are we seeing? 430 00:27:12,300 --> 00:27:15,500 Do you wanna trust some theory 431 00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:19,100 that somebody figured out sitting in an office somewhere? 432 00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:21,100 Or do you wanna trust what you actually see 433 00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:23,300 out there with your own eyes? 434 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:26,400 Maybe the experts didn't really know 435 00:27:26,500 --> 00:27:28,400 as much as they pretended to know. 436 00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,900 About this time, a gentleman came into the office 437 00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:42,800 of the "Architectural Forum." 438 00:27:42,900 --> 00:27:44,900 He was very much worried about East Harlem. 439 00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,700 About 300 million dollars 440 00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:51,500 uh, worth of city rebuilding money 441 00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:53,600 had been put to work. 442 00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:56,900 He could see that their problems 443 00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:00,100 were growing greater than they had ever been in the past. 444 00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,700 She goes up to Harlem and she was taken around 445 00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:11,800 by William Kirk of the Union Settlement House. 446 00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,600 And he's showing her all the things 447 00:28:14,700 --> 00:28:17,500 that are being lost in this community 448 00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:19,400 when it's being demolished. 449 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:24,200 He would walk me around East Harlem. 450 00:28:24,300 --> 00:28:26,400 We would stop in at stores 451 00:28:26,500 --> 00:28:28,500 stop in at housing projects. 452 00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:32,700 I began to see the.. 453 00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:36,300 Just out of the accumulation of all of this 454 00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:40,000 I was beginning to understand how things worked. 455 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,500 Many little details of cause and effect. 456 00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:49,200 She describes it as the very beginning. 457 00:28:49,300 --> 00:28:50,600 The sort of moment when the light bulb 458 00:28:50,700 --> 00:28:52,700 kind of went off in her head. 459 00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,000 What I was seeing, in fact, was, uh 460 00:29:06,100 --> 00:29:09,800 what makes the very intricate order of the city. 461 00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,100 This has to do with a quality 462 00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,300 that's called rather vaguely urbanism. 463 00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:26,300 Cities are extremely physical places. 464 00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,100 It's not an inert mass. 465 00:29:29,900 --> 00:29:31,300 It's enterprises and people 466 00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,000 reacting in certain ways to each other 467 00:29:34,100 --> 00:29:35,900 and mutually supporting each other. 468 00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:40,900 And wherever it worked properly 469 00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,500 there seemed to be an awful lot of diversity. 470 00:29:45,100 --> 00:29:47,100 Many different kinds of enterprises 471 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,400 many different kinds of people 472 00:29:50,500 --> 00:29:52,900 mutually supporting and supplementing each other. 473 00:30:00,500 --> 00:30:03,500 Jane Jacobs is thinking about how does a neighborhood work? 474 00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:05,600 How does a street work? 475 00:30:05,700 --> 00:30:08,300 What function does a sidewalk play? 476 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,300 But what she's really after is a new theory 477 00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,000 of how cities function. 478 00:30:14,100 --> 00:30:15,900 "In Death And Life Of Great American Cities" 479 00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:19,000 she's asking what is the problem of a city? 480 00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,400 She argues, "A city is a problem 481 00:30:27,500 --> 00:30:29,600 of organized complexity." 482 00:30:31,700 --> 00:30:34,800 Looks on the surface 483 00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:36,900 like it's complex and disorderly.. 484 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:40,600 ...but in fact, there's an underlying structure. 485 00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,400 Looks like chaos, but in fact, there's a balance. 486 00:30:46,500 --> 00:30:48,200 There's a productive mix 487 00:30:48,300 --> 00:30:50,400 of different functions and organisms. 488 00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:54,800 She draws on ecological metaphors 489 00:30:54,900 --> 00:30:56,700 biological metaphors 490 00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:58,500 to suggest how it's really an ecosystem. 491 00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:02,400 She wrote.. 492 00:31:02,500 --> 00:31:05,000 "To see complex systems of functional order 493 00:31:05,100 --> 00:31:07,800 "as order and not as chaos 494 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:10,200 takes understanding. 495 00:31:10,300 --> 00:31:13,900 "The leaves dropping from the trees in the autumn 496 00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,000 "the interior of an airplane engine.. 497 00:31:17,900 --> 00:31:19,900 "...the entrails of a dissected rabbit.. 498 00:31:21,900 --> 00:31:23,600 "...the city desk of a newspaper.. 499 00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,400 "All appear to be chaos 500 00:31:28,500 --> 00:31:30,200 "if they are seen without comprehension. 501 00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,200 "Once they are seen as systems of order 502 00:31:34,300 --> 00:31:36,400 they actually look different." 503 00:31:38,100 --> 00:31:41,500 Jacobs understood when cities really work 504 00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:45,000 they're phenomena that come from the bottom up. 505 00:31:45,100 --> 00:31:47,100 So a great neighborhood is what happens 506 00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,300 when thousands of different actors.. 507 00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:54,000 ...and that's the shopkeepers, the bar owners 508 00:31:54,100 --> 00:31:55,800 the people walking the streets 509 00:31:55,900 --> 00:31:58,000 they spontaneously come together 510 00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,200 in, in an uncoordinated but meaningful way 511 00:32:01,300 --> 00:32:03,500 to create the kind of flavor and personality 512 00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,000 of a distinct neighborhood. 513 00:32:06,100 --> 00:32:07,900 That's not planned. 514 00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:10,800 That's much more a question of organized complexity. 515 00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,700 Jane Jacobs understood that living cities are not pretty. 516 00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:19,700 They're messy, uh, chaotic 517 00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,400 dense with people interacting together. 518 00:32:24,100 --> 00:32:28,100 Dead cities are beautiful in a certain sense 519 00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,500 because they tend to look predictable. 520 00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:31,900 There aren't very many people. 521 00:32:33,900 --> 00:32:36,500 If you can understand a city, then that city is dead. 522 00:32:39,700 --> 00:32:42,100 Living cities are congested. 523 00:32:43,500 --> 00:32:46,000 They're frustrating. 524 00:32:46,100 --> 00:32:48,500 And at the same time, that's where your dreams come true. 525 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:02,700 Planners, they don't see any of the wondrous human qualities 526 00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,000 that Jacobs is seeing. 527 00:33:05,100 --> 00:33:08,500 The very forms of urbanism that she wrote about 528 00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:11,500 the urban renewalists sought to destroy. 529 00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:34,800 What would you do for Harlem? 530 00:33:34,900 --> 00:33:37,000 - The slum corner of Harlem. - Yes. 531 00:33:37,100 --> 00:33:40,000 I'd take that and all the other similar slums. 532 00:33:40,100 --> 00:33:42,000 I'd tear 'em all out, every bit of 'em. 533 00:33:42,100 --> 00:33:43,300 It's a cancerous thing 534 00:33:43,500 --> 00:33:45,300 and you've just got to wipe them out. 535 00:33:47,900 --> 00:33:50,300 I say that you have a cancerous growth there 536 00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:51,700 that has to be carved out. 537 00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:53,000 Alright, you've carved it out 538 00:33:53,100 --> 00:33:54,400 and now you've replaced it with something new. 539 00:33:54,500 --> 00:33:55,600 Yes, that's right. 540 00:33:55,700 --> 00:33:57,100 With something that's decent 541 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,100 something that involves light and air 542 00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:03,000 and, uh, new schools and playgrounds and parks. 543 00:34:03,100 --> 00:34:05,600 And I'd say that's a hell of a big contribution 544 00:34:05,700 --> 00:34:07,400 and certainly all the contribution 545 00:34:07,500 --> 00:34:09,000 that I would be able to make 546 00:34:09,100 --> 00:34:11,200 with all the people I can persuade to make it. 547 00:34:13,900 --> 00:34:15,600 Instead of following the natural way 548 00:34:15,700 --> 00:34:17,900 that people use space 549 00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:19,900 city planning in this post-war era 550 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:21,900 and modern architecture created 551 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,000 this abstract vision of what it should be. 552 00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,600 Concentrated on the utopian and the ideal. 553 00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:44,800 In the 1920s, you get the rise 554 00:34:44,900 --> 00:34:47,800 of this curious, mystical figure 555 00:34:47,900 --> 00:34:49,800 um, out of Switzerland 556 00:34:49,900 --> 00:34:52,100 uh, who calls himself Le Corbusier. 557 00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:55,100 He's done some architecture and he's bethinking himself 558 00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:57,900 not only an architect, but a great urban visionary. 559 00:35:00,100 --> 00:35:02,900 The real gestation of his ideas 560 00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:05,500 about modernist urbanism 561 00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:08,700 that came as a result of riding in an airplane over Paris. 562 00:35:10,900 --> 00:35:13,200 Seeing the city from up in the air 563 00:35:13,300 --> 00:35:16,100 looking down God-like on this diorama 564 00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:20,100 versus considering and knowing the city from the streets. 565 00:35:22,100 --> 00:35:25,200 Corb was enraptured by the airplane. 566 00:35:25,300 --> 00:35:28,200 He writes that the airplane indicts the mess 567 00:35:28,300 --> 00:35:30,100 we've made of our cities. 568 00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,500 Before the wheels hit the tarmac 569 00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,000 he's concluded that we need to sweep all this away 570 00:35:37,100 --> 00:35:38,900 and rebuild our cities. 571 00:35:41,300 --> 00:35:43,800 Le Corbusier envisioned tearing down 572 00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,000 huge sections of Paris.. 573 00:35:46,900 --> 00:35:50,100 ...and replacing it with slabs 574 00:35:50,300 --> 00:35:53,000 modern slabs, cruciform buildings. 575 00:35:54,900 --> 00:35:58,000 He proposed superhighways 576 00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,100 that went through green open space. 577 00:36:02,500 --> 00:36:05,900 And they were going to terminate in superblocks. 578 00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:08,700 And the superblocks had high-rise buildings 579 00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:10,400 and the high-rise buildings 580 00:36:10,500 --> 00:36:13,100 were so that people could have light and air 581 00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:14,900 and they could get out of the slums. 582 00:36:17,300 --> 00:36:18,900 He was thoroughly of the opinion 583 00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,300 that if you had, uh, good architecture 584 00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:23,000 the lives of people would be improved 585 00:36:23,100 --> 00:36:24,400 and that architecture would improve people 586 00:36:24,500 --> 00:36:25,800 and people would improve architecture 587 00:36:25,900 --> 00:36:28,500 until perfectibility would descend on us 588 00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:30,900 like The Holy Ghost and we'd be happy forever after. 589 00:36:32,700 --> 00:36:35,100 Corb did this plan and made his models 590 00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,200 and, uh, it excited a lot of people. 591 00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,600 But in France, they weren't so excited. 592 00:36:41,700 --> 00:36:45,300 The idea of the Ville Radieuse and the tower in a park 593 00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,000 ended up, uh, moving to America 594 00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:49,900 just like the rest of modernism did. 595 00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:58,800 To help us get a glimpse into the future 596 00:36:58,900 --> 00:37:01,300 of this unfinished world of ours 597 00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:04,700 there has been created for the New York World's Fair 598 00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:06,500 a thought-provoking exhibit 599 00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,400 of the developments ahead of us. 600 00:37:09,500 --> 00:37:13,400 In 1939, General Motors had an exhibition. 601 00:37:13,500 --> 00:37:15,500 The Futurama. 602 00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:17,600 It showed superhighways. 603 00:37:17,700 --> 00:37:21,000 And everybody in America wanted this. 604 00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:24,100 Here is an American city replanned 605 00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:27,400 around a highly-developed modern traffic system. 606 00:37:28,700 --> 00:37:31,100 Rebuilt and replanned. 607 00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:36,400 Residential, commercial and industrial areas 608 00:37:36,500 --> 00:37:38,700 all have been separated 609 00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:41,900 for greater efficiency and greater convenience. 610 00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,600 The '39 World's Fair in New York 611 00:37:56,700 --> 00:37:58,900 was a Corbusier event. 612 00:37:59,100 --> 00:38:01,300 It celebrated that style. 613 00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,400 And so we see some suggestion 614 00:38:05,500 --> 00:38:07,800 of the things to come. 615 00:38:07,900 --> 00:38:09,800 A world with a future 616 00:38:09,900 --> 00:38:14,100 in which all of us are tremendously interested 617 00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,300 because that is where we are going to spend 618 00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:19,200 the rest of our lives. 619 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:23,800 In a future which can be whatever 620 00:38:23,900 --> 00:38:25,900 we propose to make it. 621 00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:40,400 Modernism moved into the mainstream 622 00:38:40,500 --> 00:38:44,700 of both American commercial architecture 623 00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:46,100 and urban renewal. 624 00:38:47,700 --> 00:38:50,800 The public housing model that we picked in the United States 625 00:38:50,900 --> 00:38:53,000 was a misinterpretation of Le Corbusier. 626 00:38:54,300 --> 00:38:57,500 The towers in his 1923 plan 627 00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:00,900 were for offices, and then around the towers 628 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:05,700 were low 7 story buildings with generous balconies. 629 00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:08,000 He never called for people 630 00:39:08,100 --> 00:39:10,400 living in high-rise towers. 631 00:39:10,500 --> 00:39:13,300 It was one of those odd moments 632 00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,900 where a set of intellectual ideas 633 00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,900 could be corrupted very quickly and easily 634 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:23,200 into something cheap and commercial. 635 00:39:23,300 --> 00:39:26,900 The simplest formula to make quick money is modernism. 636 00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:30,100 And it was very cheap, very quick to produce 637 00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,900 and could suddenly enable 638 00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,600 huge amounts of building to happen very quickly. 639 00:39:36,700 --> 00:39:38,900 And Robert Moses totally understood that. 640 00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:44,600 The one thing missing completely 641 00:39:44,700 --> 00:39:47,200 from that vision is streets. 642 00:39:47,300 --> 00:39:50,700 And the idea that a street is something you actually walk on 643 00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:53,700 and a street is a place where things happen. 644 00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:56,400 Jane Jacobs saw that at a time 645 00:39:56,500 --> 00:39:59,200 when everybody else was thinking the sidewalk 646 00:39:59,300 --> 00:40:02,800 was a kind of foolish leftover of another age. 647 00:40:09,100 --> 00:40:12,000 "This is something everyone already knows. 648 00:40:12,100 --> 00:40:15,800 "A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. 649 00:40:15,900 --> 00:40:18,400 "A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe. 650 00:40:20,300 --> 00:40:21,600 "But how does this work really? 651 00:40:23,500 --> 00:40:26,600 "There must be eyes upon the street. 652 00:40:26,700 --> 00:40:28,500 "Eyes belonging to those we may call 653 00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:30,300 "the natural proprietors of the street. 654 00:40:31,900 --> 00:40:34,300 "The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers 655 00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,200 "and to ensure the safety of both residents and strangers 656 00:40:38,300 --> 00:40:40,900 "must be oriented to the street. 657 00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,400 "They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it 658 00:40:43,500 --> 00:40:45,200 and leave it blind." 659 00:40:47,700 --> 00:40:51,000 Philosophically, what she recognized was 660 00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,100 safety doesn't come from armed security guards 661 00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,100 or blocking the entrances. 662 00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,100 What makes a neighborhood great is precisely the fact 663 00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:03,000 that there are people on the street. 664 00:41:03,100 --> 00:41:06,500 "The sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously 665 00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:09,100 "both to add to the numbers of effective eyes on the street 666 00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:11,600 "and to induce the people in the buildings along the street 667 00:41:11,700 --> 00:41:14,100 "to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. 668 00:41:17,500 --> 00:41:18,700 "Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop 669 00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:20,700 "or looking out a window at an empty street. 670 00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,300 "Almost nobody does such a thing. 671 00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,300 "Large numbers of people entertain themselves off and on 672 00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:30,400 by watching street activity." 673 00:41:32,500 --> 00:41:34,000 She went out and looked at things. 674 00:41:34,100 --> 00:41:38,200 When she said that the doormen were paid eyes on the street 675 00:41:38,300 --> 00:41:40,300 and that the same thing could happen 676 00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:43,600 from bars on the street in West Village 677 00:41:43,700 --> 00:41:45,500 I understood what she was talking about. 678 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,600 Nobody has to worry about things 679 00:41:48,700 --> 00:41:50,400 where there are a lot of people on the street. 680 00:41:54,100 --> 00:41:57,700 Jane Jacobs reverses the vantage point. 681 00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:00,300 What is it like actually to live in these places 682 00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:02,300 from street level? 683 00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,900 And it's that simple change of perspective 684 00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:07,500 that lead her away from the orthodoxy of the time. 685 00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,500 Robert Moses had no interest really in paying attention 686 00:42:16,700 --> 00:42:19,400 to what was there in neighborhoods. 687 00:42:19,500 --> 00:42:22,600 What was there, he viewed as simply an obstacle 688 00:42:22,700 --> 00:42:24,700 to what he wanted to make happen. 689 00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:30,000 People oppose Moses all the time. 690 00:42:30,100 --> 00:42:33,300 Whether he wanted Lincoln Center for the performing arts 691 00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:35,400 a bridge across the entrance to New York Harbor 692 00:42:35,500 --> 00:42:39,400 a parking lot where mothers air their babies in Central Park 693 00:42:39,500 --> 00:42:42,000 a highway down the spine of Fire Island 694 00:42:42,100 --> 00:42:44,600 or one through the middle of Washington Square 695 00:42:44,700 --> 00:42:47,000 vehement opposition was what he expected 696 00:42:47,100 --> 00:42:49,200 and what he got. 697 00:42:49,300 --> 00:42:51,300 Oh, there's opposition to everything 698 00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:53,500 that's, uh, progressive, everything that's new. 699 00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,800 The opinion of people who were activists 700 00:42:58,900 --> 00:43:00,800 as we were in the village 701 00:43:00,900 --> 00:43:04,500 were Robert Moses was terrible 702 00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,500 and Robert Moses was destroying the city 703 00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:09,900 and Robert Moses had to be stopped. 704 00:43:11,500 --> 00:43:13,400 Jane had got involved in several efforts 705 00:43:13,500 --> 00:43:16,900 to stop Robert Moses from ripping the city to pieces. 706 00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:18,600 Starting with the, uh, his attempt 707 00:43:18,700 --> 00:43:21,200 to run Fifth Avenue down through Washington Square. 708 00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:29,100 The first time I became aware 709 00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:33,300 of the threat of what the highways 710 00:43:33,500 --> 00:43:37,000 were doing and could do to New York 711 00:43:37,100 --> 00:43:39,800 was when along came the plan 712 00:43:39,900 --> 00:43:43,000 to push Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park 713 00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:46,900 and down below it as a continuous street. 714 00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:50,600 They, uh, wanted to have the Fifth Avenue buses 715 00:43:50,700 --> 00:43:52,800 go through the park 716 00:43:52,900 --> 00:43:55,500 down into West Broadway 717 00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:57,300 and change the name of that 718 00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,400 to Fifth Avenue South 719 00:44:00,500 --> 00:44:02,800 so as to make it more valuable for rents. 720 00:44:02,900 --> 00:44:06,200 And that was a Robert Moses project. 721 00:44:06,300 --> 00:44:08,500 This wasn't in the abstract for Jane Jacobs. 722 00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:10,400 This was happening close to home. 723 00:44:10,500 --> 00:44:11,700 Right in her backyard. 724 00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:14,800 This was where she brought her kids 725 00:44:14,900 --> 00:44:16,900 in strollers to play in that park. 726 00:44:23,900 --> 00:44:27,200 It was the campus for a university. 727 00:44:27,300 --> 00:44:29,800 It was the front yard 728 00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:31,800 for neighborhood kids growing up. 729 00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:38,400 It was a true reflection of a diverse neighborhood. 730 00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:44,300 This is The Circle. 731 00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,800 On weekdays, it's a wading pool for village kids. 732 00:44:47,900 --> 00:44:50,600 But on Sundays, the water is turned off 733 00:44:50,700 --> 00:44:52,400 and the circle becomes a meeting place 734 00:44:52,500 --> 00:44:55,800 for guitarists, bongo and banjo players 735 00:44:55,900 --> 00:44:59,100 villagers on a stroll, folk singers and tourists. 736 00:45:01,700 --> 00:45:04,800 To me and to many others, we were outraged 737 00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,500 about a road going through Washington Square 738 00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:09,700 and we were going to save Washington Square Park. 739 00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:14,900 Washington Square was really Jane Jacobs' 740 00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,100 beginning as a civic activist. 741 00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:19,800 All of the activists, myself included 742 00:45:19,900 --> 00:45:22,800 were involved in trying to stop that. 743 00:45:22,900 --> 00:45:25,000 The leaders there 744 00:45:25,100 --> 00:45:28,200 included, uh, Jane Jacobs 745 00:45:28,300 --> 00:45:30,100 and Shirley Hayes. 746 00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:33,200 Shirley Hayes and Edith Lyons 747 00:45:33,300 --> 00:45:35,700 uh, were the 2 women 748 00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:39,600 who started the, the fight against the roadway 749 00:45:39,700 --> 00:45:41,400 in Washington Square Park. 750 00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:55,400 Jane was not deferential to power. 751 00:45:55,500 --> 00:45:58,400 So she ups the ante on that Washington Square fight 752 00:45:58,500 --> 00:45:59,800 and says, "I'm gonna write the mayor." 753 00:46:01,900 --> 00:46:06,400 "I have heard with alarm and almost with disbelief 754 00:46:06,500 --> 00:46:08,600 "the plans to run a sunken highway through the center 755 00:46:08,700 --> 00:46:09,600 "of Washington Square. 756 00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,600 "My husband and I are amongst the citizens 757 00:46:13,700 --> 00:46:15,600 "who truly believe in New York 758 00:46:15,700 --> 00:46:17,300 "to the extent that we have bought a home 759 00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:19,400 "in the heart of the city and remodeled it 760 00:46:19,500 --> 00:46:21,900 "with a lot of hard work. 761 00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:24,000 "It is very discouraging to do our best 762 00:46:24,100 --> 00:46:25,400 "to make the city more habitable 763 00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:27,700 "and then to learn that the city itself 764 00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:29,900 is thinking up schemes to make it uninhabitable." 765 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:37,100 Jane's example that she set for herself 766 00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,800 is an example for other people to follow. 767 00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,300 If a highway is coming through 768 00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:45,000 that's going to be very destructive 769 00:46:45,100 --> 00:46:46,500 and you know it's an idiotic thing 770 00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,000 you fight that highway. 771 00:46:49,100 --> 00:46:52,200 Protest against stultification and the status quo 772 00:46:52,300 --> 00:46:54,100 and things that touch you and your neighborhood directly. 773 00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:57,000 I think she was effective 774 00:46:57,100 --> 00:46:59,300 because of the force of her personality 775 00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,800 and the fact that she was able to mobilize 776 00:47:01,900 --> 00:47:03,300 a lot of people. 777 00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,400 And Margaret Meade and Susan Sontag 778 00:47:05,500 --> 00:47:07,900 and all the various folks that Jane was involved with 779 00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:12,200 were drawn to the tangibility of this particular fight. 780 00:47:21,300 --> 00:47:22,700 They get too many critics. 781 00:47:22,900 --> 00:47:24,600 They get too many mud-throwers 782 00:47:24,700 --> 00:47:27,000 too many people who foul their nest and there we are. 783 00:47:27,100 --> 00:47:28,400 That's our trouble. 784 00:47:28,500 --> 00:47:29,700 Too many people sitting around 785 00:47:29,900 --> 00:47:31,800 calling names like Mumford. 786 00:47:31,900 --> 00:47:34,200 People that, what do they contribute? 787 00:47:34,300 --> 00:47:36,300 You have any problem to solve, any difficulty 788 00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:39,100 you'd never call upon them. 789 00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:41,300 Call upon them for four-letter words. 790 00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,600 They don't even have very good vocabulary in my book. 791 00:47:46,700 --> 00:47:49,800 Robert Moses wasn't used to anybody saying no to him. 792 00:47:49,900 --> 00:47:51,800 He'd fire off these letters 793 00:47:51,900 --> 00:47:53,900 to people of, uh, Greenwich Village. 794 00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:58,800 "I realized that in the process of rebuilding 795 00:47:58,900 --> 00:48:00,300 "south of Washington Square 796 00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:02,300 "there would be cries of anguish 797 00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,500 "from those who are honestly convinced 798 00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,100 "the Sistine Madonna was painted in the basement 799 00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:09,200 "of one of the old buildings there 800 00:48:09,300 --> 00:48:11,900 "not presently occupied by a cabaret or speakeasy. 801 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,100 "That Michelangelo's David was fashioned 802 00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:18,900 "in a garret in the same neighborhood. 803 00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:20,800 "And that anyone who lays hands 804 00:48:20,900 --> 00:48:23,800 "on these sacred landmarks will be executed 805 00:48:23,900 --> 00:48:26,200 "if he has not already been struck down 806 00:48:26,300 --> 00:48:28,000 by a bolt from heaven." 807 00:48:29,500 --> 00:48:33,400 They managed to show Moses as this bully 808 00:48:33,500 --> 00:48:36,400 and they, they got a lot of important people 809 00:48:36,500 --> 00:48:38,900 on their side, including Eleanor Roosevelt. 810 00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:41,800 I would feel very strongly 811 00:48:41,900 --> 00:48:44,900 that destroying the Square 812 00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:48,500 by putting a large artery 813 00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:51,100 for traffic through the Square 814 00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:54,800 would harm not only the Square itself 815 00:48:54,900 --> 00:48:56,700 but the whole neighborhood 816 00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:59,400 and really the city. 817 00:48:59,500 --> 00:49:02,200 I'm not opposed to change. 818 00:49:02,300 --> 00:49:05,000 In fact, I believe in change. 819 00:49:05,100 --> 00:49:07,700 But I think that good tradition 820 00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,200 has to be preserved. 821 00:49:12,700 --> 00:49:15,200 Jacobs was a brilliant strategist 822 00:49:15,300 --> 00:49:18,200 when it came to civil action. 823 00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:20,800 She had a real sense for the photo op. 824 00:49:20,900 --> 00:49:22,700 In Washington Square Park 825 00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:25,600 she arranged for her daughter and another girl 826 00:49:25,700 --> 00:49:29,200 to conduct a ribbon-tying ceremony. 827 00:49:29,300 --> 00:49:30,500 This, of course, was the opposite of 828 00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:32,100 the ribbon cutting ceremony 829 00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:34,300 the politicians loved to, uh, celebrate 830 00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:35,600 with public works. 831 00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:39,300 It was at one of the hearings 832 00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:42,600 where Moses was foolish enough to say that 833 00:49:42,700 --> 00:49:45,800 nobody's against us except a bunch of mothers. 834 00:49:45,900 --> 00:49:48,400 How could he be so tactless? 835 00:49:48,500 --> 00:49:50,100 Only if you think that people don't matter at all 836 00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:52,900 could you make a statement like that. 837 00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:56,000 She was a housewife. That's how they treated her. 838 00:49:56,100 --> 00:49:58,700 I mean, of course, she was a professional journalist. 839 00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:00,500 That was not somehow.. 840 00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:02,400 When you want to dismiss her, you just say 841 00:50:02,500 --> 00:50:04,600 there was this housewife from Hudson Street. 842 00:50:06,700 --> 00:50:08,400 Try to mess with a bunch of mothers. 843 00:50:08,500 --> 00:50:10,000 Uh, I think that 844 00:50:10,100 --> 00:50:12,400 he underestimated what the, uh 845 00:50:12,500 --> 00:50:15,200 effectiveness of these mothers might in fact be. 846 00:50:15,300 --> 00:50:18,900 Literally thousands of people turned to 847 00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:23,600 and it took quite a few years, but did save it. 848 00:50:23,700 --> 00:50:25,400 It ended up being an extraordinarily 849 00:50:25,500 --> 00:50:28,400 potent opposition, which he'd never met before. 850 00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,500 Moses had never met this before. 851 00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:33,300 He had his, he had it coming. 852 00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:37,700 Washington Square Park was certainly 853 00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:41,800 the first, uh, public defeat for Robert Moses 854 00:50:41,900 --> 00:50:44,700 and it was a, uh, uh, a major chink in his armor. 855 00:50:47,900 --> 00:50:50,100 The battle over Washington Square 856 00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:52,200 is, is Jane's first taste of victory. 857 00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:58,600 Not long after the Washington Square victory 858 00:50:58,700 --> 00:51:01,000 "Death And Life" is published. 859 00:51:01,100 --> 00:51:04,900 And Bennett Cerf, head of Random House 860 00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,800 sends a copy to Robert Moses. 861 00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:11,500 And Moses sends it back. 862 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,000 "I am returning the book you sent me. 863 00:51:17,100 --> 00:51:19,800 "Aside from the fact that it is intemperate 864 00:51:19,900 --> 00:51:21,300 "and inaccurate.. 865 00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:25,600 "...it is also libelous. 866 00:51:25,700 --> 00:51:28,500 I call your attention, for example, to page 131." 867 00:51:31,700 --> 00:51:34,300 "Robert Moses has made an art of using control 868 00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:36,800 "of public money to get his way 869 00:51:36,900 --> 00:51:39,800 "with those whom the voters elect and depend on 870 00:51:39,900 --> 00:51:42,200 "to represent their frequently opposing interests. 871 00:51:44,300 --> 00:51:47,900 "This is, of course, in other guises 872 00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:51,100 an old, sad story of democratic government." 873 00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:55,500 He didn't even wanna recognize 874 00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:58,400 the existence of the book or of Jane. 875 00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:05,200 Others, uh, were also, uh, not charitable 876 00:52:05,300 --> 00:52:07,500 including Lewis Mumford. 877 00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:10,400 Lewis Mumford, the great architectural critic 878 00:52:10,500 --> 00:52:13,500 for "The New Yorker," his famous review of her book 879 00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:17,700 had the title Mother Jacobs' Home Remedies. 880 00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:19,200 He's immediately telling you 881 00:52:19,300 --> 00:52:21,200 Jane Jacobs was just this sweet, old lady 882 00:52:21,300 --> 00:52:24,600 trying to get some homeopathic medicine into the city 883 00:52:24,700 --> 00:52:26,600 instead of doing the serious surgery 884 00:52:26,700 --> 00:52:28,600 that a real doctor would do. 885 00:52:31,900 --> 00:52:33,200 Right around the time 886 00:52:33,300 --> 00:52:36,000 of "Death and Life of Great American Cities" 887 00:52:36,100 --> 00:52:38,500 ironically, her own neighborhood 888 00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:40,400 of the West Village, the very neighborhood 889 00:52:40,500 --> 00:52:44,400 that she had, had proclaimed as a model 890 00:52:44,500 --> 00:52:46,700 for what neighborhoods could be 891 00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:48,700 was earmarked for urban renewal. 892 00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,800 Moses was commissioner of, uh, housing 893 00:52:56,900 --> 00:52:59,700 in the urban renewal effort to build more public housing 894 00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:01,400 in New York City. 895 00:53:01,500 --> 00:53:03,800 He actually stepped down from that position 896 00:53:03,900 --> 00:53:05,500 but before he did 897 00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:08,100 he designated the West Village 898 00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:11,400 as eligible for slum designation. 899 00:53:19,500 --> 00:53:22,400 I got the book finished finally 900 00:53:22,500 --> 00:53:26,900 and thought, ah, now I can think about something else. 901 00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,100 And for 3 weeks 902 00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:32,000 I did think about other things. 903 00:53:32,100 --> 00:53:35,800 Then I opened the "New York Times" one morning 904 00:53:35,900 --> 00:53:39,600 and found that our own area of the West Village 905 00:53:39,700 --> 00:53:43,800 was going to have an urban renewal project in it. 906 00:53:43,900 --> 00:53:46,500 She really didn't think of herself as a community organizer 907 00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:48,400 as a, a street fighter or that sort. 908 00:53:48,500 --> 00:53:49,800 She was a writer. 909 00:53:49,900 --> 00:53:52,900 She did not appreciate the distraction. 910 00:53:52,900 --> 00:53:55,600 She really didn't, but she knew she had to do it. 911 00:53:55,700 --> 00:53:58,000 She was sad. I mean, she would shrug her shoulders. 912 00:53:58,100 --> 00:54:00,100 What can I, what can I do? 913 00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:07,500 You know that thing about an inert object? 914 00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:09,200 Well, there is nothing more inert 915 00:54:09,300 --> 00:54:11,100 than a government bureau. 916 00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:13,900 There's nothing more inert than a planning office. 917 00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,000 It gets going in one direction 918 00:54:16,100 --> 00:54:20,000 and it is never going to change of its own accord. 919 00:54:20,100 --> 00:54:24,300 So I suddenly had to put into practice my own premises 920 00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:28,700 that if anything was going to happen to reverse 921 00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,100 the way things were being done 922 00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:33,300 then the citizens had to take some initiative 923 00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:36,900 and the citizens had to frustrate the planners. 924 00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:39,400 I thereupon began to devote myself 925 00:54:39,500 --> 00:54:41,400 to frustrating planners. 926 00:54:44,500 --> 00:54:46,700 And so did the whole neighborhood. 927 00:54:48,500 --> 00:54:51,000 Jane calls a meeting of local residents 928 00:54:51,100 --> 00:54:52,900 at The Lion's Head 929 00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:55,100 a favorite neighborhood hangout. 930 00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:59,900 Organizes people to speak at public meetings 931 00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:04,600 and gets everybody to wear sunglasses 932 00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:07,100 with an X painted on them. 933 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:14,700 They were fairly sophisticated 934 00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:16,600 I think, in the tactics that they would employ 935 00:55:16,700 --> 00:55:18,700 and they're tackling somebody who's been writing 936 00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:19,900 for a living for a couple of decades 937 00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,900 and knows how to make an argument. 938 00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:26,900 We all knew one another and were constantly planning 939 00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:30,100 on how to, uh, get the mayor on our side 940 00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:32,100 and how to threaten him. And we did. 941 00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,100 We got him on our side. 942 00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,600 She filed a lawsuit against the city of New York 943 00:55:37,700 --> 00:55:40,100 to try to block the urban renewal plan. 944 00:55:43,900 --> 00:55:45,500 "I think that the time has come 945 00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:46,700 "to put the West Village 946 00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:48,400 "urban renewal proposal to rest. 947 00:55:50,100 --> 00:55:52,400 "Promptly remove the West Village designation. 948 00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,600 Cordially, Robert F. Wagner." 949 00:55:57,700 --> 00:56:00,300 They prevailed and, uh, at the end of the day 950 00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,600 the slum designation never happened in the West Village. 951 00:56:06,300 --> 00:56:10,400 She effectively showed the people of Greenwich Village 952 00:56:10,500 --> 00:56:12,600 that they could fight city hall 953 00:56:12,700 --> 00:56:15,800 that they did not have to accept 954 00:56:15,900 --> 00:56:19,800 the plans of the planners at their drafting tables 955 00:56:19,900 --> 00:56:23,600 and that they could reject those lines 956 00:56:23,700 --> 00:56:25,700 being drawn around their homes. 957 00:56:28,900 --> 00:56:30,400 We need to understand Greenwich Village 958 00:56:30,500 --> 00:56:33,700 is a proxy here for a wave 959 00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:35,700 that was starting to take hold in the United States 960 00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:38,300 where there was increasing resistance 961 00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:40,100 to centralized authority. 962 00:56:43,700 --> 00:56:46,000 Her strategy was certainly informed 963 00:56:46,100 --> 00:56:49,800 by other struggles that were going on at the time. 964 00:56:49,900 --> 00:56:51,800 Within 3 years of each other 965 00:56:51,900 --> 00:56:54,000 Jacobs published her book. 966 00:56:54,100 --> 00:56:57,100 Uh, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique." 967 00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,400 Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring." 968 00:57:00,500 --> 00:57:01,800 The Environmental Movement. 969 00:57:03,300 --> 00:57:05,800 Civil Rights. 970 00:57:05,900 --> 00:57:09,000 The movement for decent cities 971 00:57:09,100 --> 00:57:10,700 feminism, you know 972 00:57:10,800 --> 00:57:13,200 all were being born at once 973 00:57:13,300 --> 00:57:15,700 and all were sharing tools 974 00:57:15,800 --> 00:57:18,300 of propaganda, of local organizing 975 00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:20,000 of civil disobedience. 976 00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:25,000 Jane Jacobs was perhaps the most articulate voice 977 00:57:25,100 --> 00:57:27,900 of a movement that now seems 978 00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:29,400 merely common sense. 979 00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:36,200 Any city that's tearing down its buildings 980 00:57:36,300 --> 00:57:38,700 just to make money for a development 981 00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,500 or, uh, just to have novelty 982 00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:44,900 is doing something criminal. 983 00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:58,300 A fella who gets up in the upper stories 984 00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:00,800 of a, of a public housing project 985 00:58:00,900 --> 00:58:03,800 where he has a view, what's the matter with him? 986 00:58:03,900 --> 00:58:05,700 He's got a nice place to live, hasn't he? 987 00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:10,800 I think that the objection that some might have 988 00:58:10,900 --> 00:58:13,400 was that the view is just of another housing development 989 00:58:13,500 --> 00:58:14,800 and another highway. 990 00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:19,200 No, I don't concede that. 991 00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:27,600 It wasn't just that they wanted 992 00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:29,000 new housing in place of the old. 993 00:58:29,100 --> 00:58:31,700 They wanted an entirely different-looking city. 994 00:58:37,700 --> 00:58:41,100 Robert Moses and his constituency 995 00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:43,700 wanted it all to be very simplified 996 00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:45,300 very sterilized. 997 00:58:47,100 --> 00:58:50,100 It was the hubris of Moses and his ilk. 998 00:58:51,800 --> 00:58:55,100 The idea that we're gonna rearrange the spaces 999 00:58:55,300 --> 00:58:58,700 and therefore, we're gonna rearrange the social relations. 1000 00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:02,100 It had to do with this towers-in-the-park mentality. 1001 00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:04,400 It had to do with the creation 1002 00:59:04,500 --> 00:59:06,300 of a new form of ghetto. 1003 00:59:10,400 --> 00:59:13,100 Whole downtowns were being bulldozed 1004 00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:15,800 in the name of people, but not for the people. 1005 00:59:15,900 --> 00:59:18,000 They were destroying lives 1006 00:59:18,100 --> 00:59:21,100 and replacing them with these housing projects. 1007 00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:24,000 And why? 1008 00:59:24,100 --> 00:59:25,900 Because it was making a lot of people 1009 00:59:26,000 --> 00:59:27,400 a lot of money. 1010 00:59:27,500 --> 00:59:31,000 It was making developers a lot of money 1011 00:59:31,100 --> 00:59:33,600 politicians a lot of money 1012 00:59:33,700 --> 00:59:35,800 and it was fast money. 1013 00:59:37,500 --> 00:59:39,900 So they kept doing it over and over and over again 1014 00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:41,800 in cities all over the country. 1015 00:59:43,500 --> 00:59:45,100 It was several years 1016 00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:48,900 after Robert Moses had begun building these projects 1017 00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:50,900 that the other cities caught up. 1018 01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:09,800 What they were building was the Corbusier model. 1019 01:00:09,900 --> 01:00:12,000 You saw the kind of building of these 1020 01:00:12,100 --> 01:00:14,900 uh, these housing projects across the United States. 1021 01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:18,700 You know, 25 story block apartment buildings 1022 01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:21,100 with playgrounds and gardens around them 1023 01:00:21,300 --> 01:00:23,600 that looked great in all the drawings. 1024 01:00:23,700 --> 01:00:25,500 Here in bright, new buildings 1025 01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,900 with spacious grounds, they can live. 1026 01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:32,200 Live with indoor plumbing, electric lights 1027 01:00:32,300 --> 01:00:35,000 fresh plastered walls and the rest of the conveniences 1028 01:00:35,100 --> 01:00:37,200 that are expected in the 20th century. 1029 01:00:38,900 --> 01:00:41,500 In these projects, children can play in safety 1030 01:00:41,700 --> 01:00:44,100 on the wide lawns 1031 01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:46,200 not in the littered alleys and vacant lots. 1032 01:00:48,500 --> 01:00:52,600 We must make sure that every family in America 1033 01:00:52,700 --> 01:00:56,200 lives in a home of dignity 1034 01:00:56,300 --> 01:00:58,700 in a neighborhood of pride 1035 01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:01,300 and a community of opportunity 1036 01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:04,400 and a city of promise and hope. 1037 01:01:06,100 --> 01:01:08,900 But what ended up happening is nobody ever hung out 1038 01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:11,800 on, uh, in the kind of public space around these 1039 01:01:11,900 --> 01:01:14,400 uh, projects and so they became 1040 01:01:14,500 --> 01:01:16,300 these under-populated places. 1041 01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:18,100 And they actually very quickly became 1042 01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:20,500 some of the most dangerous places in the world. 1043 01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:24,300 Concentrated poverty. 1044 01:01:24,500 --> 01:01:26,200 This was a, you know, the really 1045 01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,700 the worst thing about, uh, the projects 1046 01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:33,500 and therefore, amplified all of the pathological 1047 01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:36,100 and antisocial elements of poverty. 1048 01:01:38,700 --> 01:01:40,700 These institutions became fortressed. 1049 01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:43,000 You become cornered. You feel cornered. 1050 01:01:43,100 --> 01:01:44,700 You feel trapped. 1051 01:01:44,900 --> 01:01:47,100 They left people more vulnerable. 1052 01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:49,800 Public housing became places of fear. 1053 01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:56,100 High-rise fortresses like these 1054 01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:58,100 were built this way to save money. 1055 01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:00,900 In the long run, they didn't even do that. 1056 01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:02,800 The problem was that they were all wrong 1057 01:02:02,900 --> 01:02:05,300 for the people who wound up living in them. 1058 01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:08,100 Rural blacks, broken families 1059 01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:10,000 allowed in and to stay in 1060 01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:11,900 only if their incomes were low enough. 1061 01:02:16,600 --> 01:02:18,800 Most cities now are engaged 1062 01:02:18,900 --> 01:02:21,000 in something called urban renewal 1063 01:02:21,100 --> 01:02:22,600 which means moving the Negroes out. 1064 01:02:22,700 --> 01:02:24,800 It means Negro removal. That is what it means. 1065 01:02:24,900 --> 01:02:27,300 And the federal government is an accomplice to this fact. 1066 01:02:28,900 --> 01:02:30,800 Now this, we are talking about human beings. 1067 01:02:30,900 --> 01:02:34,000 There's not such a thing as a monolithic wall 1068 01:02:34,100 --> 01:02:35,500 or, you know, some abstraction called Negro problem. 1069 01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:37,500 These Negro boys and girls 1070 01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:39,300 who at 16 and 17 don't believe 1071 01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:40,700 the country means anything that it says 1072 01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:43,200 and don't feel that they have any place here. 1073 01:02:43,300 --> 01:02:45,800 The phrase, Urban renewal is Negro removal 1074 01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:48,900 was an acknowledgement by African-Americans 1075 01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:50,900 that, that this was an assault. 1076 01:02:51,100 --> 01:02:53,900 Removal is in the sense of 1077 01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,900 out, over there, away, far away. 1078 01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:00,800 Some place inhospitable where you can just die. 1079 01:03:00,900 --> 01:03:03,000 And a huge part of what happened to people was 1080 01:03:03,100 --> 01:03:05,100 that they were put in inhospitable places. 1081 01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:08,600 And African-Americans were put in at the margins of the city 1082 01:03:08,700 --> 01:03:11,900 in places that were, could barely support 1083 01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:14,400 the vital kind of life that people need to prosper. 1084 01:03:16,600 --> 01:03:18,800 It's as though the builders have not realized 1085 01:03:18,900 --> 01:03:20,700 that children would be living there 1086 01:03:20,800 --> 01:03:23,300 nor did they foresee the crime 1087 01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:26,100 the vandalism, which is really the acting out of rage 1088 01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:28,300 and self-loathing that can make people want 1089 01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,700 to destroy their own property. 1090 01:03:30,900 --> 01:03:32,200 People had lived in communities 1091 01:03:32,300 --> 01:03:34,100 that were messy, but they worked. 1092 01:03:34,200 --> 01:03:36,800 People had social capitals, people watched 1093 01:03:36,900 --> 01:03:40,000 each other's child when somebody was not there. 1094 01:03:40,100 --> 01:03:42,700 All this was actually taken away. 1095 01:03:42,800 --> 01:03:46,200 People had no investment emotionally. 1096 01:03:46,300 --> 01:03:49,500 People resented these projects that had been built for them 1097 01:03:49,600 --> 01:03:51,400 because they were poor. 1098 01:03:54,600 --> 01:03:56,200 So you see a lot of windows broken out. 1099 01:03:56,300 --> 01:03:57,900 They all were broken out by children throwing rocks. 1100 01:03:58,100 --> 01:04:01,000 And, uh, what's more natural than children throwing rocks? 1101 01:04:01,100 --> 01:04:03,000 They don't have nothing else to do. 1102 01:04:03,100 --> 01:04:06,000 There's absolutely no recreation facilities here. 1103 01:04:06,100 --> 01:04:07,900 And, uh, the playground like this 1104 01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:10,800 is a mockery for thousands of children. 1105 01:04:12,600 --> 01:04:15,300 Tenants had no input as to what they wanted. 1106 01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:18,000 Uh, it was built because somebody said 1107 01:04:18,100 --> 01:04:19,800 this would be good for children to play on. 1108 01:04:21,600 --> 01:04:24,000 There were graffiti everywhere 1109 01:04:24,100 --> 01:04:27,100 and there were drug problems and all the problems 1110 01:04:27,300 --> 01:04:29,200 that you can imagine come from 1111 01:04:29,300 --> 01:04:32,000 when you uproot people without their will. 1112 01:04:34,500 --> 01:04:36,700 And what do you expect, that they will love these projects? 1113 01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:38,900 No, that wasn't gonna happen. 1114 01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:47,200 Pruitt-Igoe, if you really see 1115 01:04:47,300 --> 01:04:49,600 an, uh, an aerial view of it 1116 01:04:49,700 --> 01:04:52,700 those buildings were spaced quite a distance apart. 1117 01:04:52,800 --> 01:04:55,700 If you took them and threw them on their faces 1118 01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:58,200 which is where they should've fallen 1119 01:04:58,300 --> 01:05:01,700 you will get lovely housing 20 feet high. 1120 01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:04,200 You can take a look at a little exercise here 1121 01:05:04,300 --> 01:05:08,100 that if these towers, these slabs 1122 01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:10,500 are removed from the towers 1123 01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:13,400 you begin to see a different attitude 1124 01:05:13,500 --> 01:05:14,900 of what is visible. 1125 01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:17,200 You begin to see through the site 1126 01:05:17,300 --> 01:05:20,900 as opposed to looking at a slab of buildings running. 1127 01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:23,500 One thing, the tenants are really stressing 1128 01:05:23,600 --> 01:05:26,200 is for a low-rise building 1129 01:05:26,300 --> 01:05:29,300 closer to a home. 1130 01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:31,500 Something that they can relate to. 1131 01:05:31,600 --> 01:05:33,900 What we are trying to do here 1132 01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:35,900 is to take a given situation 1133 01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:39,200 and try to bring it back 1134 01:05:39,300 --> 01:05:42,500 to a community where people would want to live. 1135 01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:04,000 After thinking about the problem 1136 01:06:04,100 --> 01:06:06,300 of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project 1137 01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:08,400 the city planners blew it up. 1138 01:06:08,500 --> 01:06:10,500 [Explosion] 1139 01:06:15,700 --> 01:06:17,800 Just dynamited it away. 1140 01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:28,000 The projects end up being tremendous failures. 1141 01:06:28,100 --> 01:06:30,900 You know, we know all about that failure now. 1142 01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:33,100 And everywhere they existed 1143 01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:35,000 30, 40 years later 1144 01:06:35,100 --> 01:06:36,800 they're all being torn down. 1145 01:06:52,300 --> 01:06:55,200 You can't put streets back where you took them out. 1146 01:06:55,300 --> 01:06:57,000 You can't put stores back. 1147 01:06:57,100 --> 01:07:00,500 You can't put the daily life and all the institutions. 1148 01:07:00,600 --> 01:07:04,000 It takes generations to build up those institutions. 1149 01:07:07,900 --> 01:07:10,500 That's what was eliminated by these projects. 1150 01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:12,600 [Explosion] 1151 01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:27,900 The superblock urbanism of the modernist ilk 1152 01:07:28,000 --> 01:07:30,000 that Jane Jacobs, uh, writes about 1153 01:07:30,100 --> 01:07:32,000 is, is destroying cities. 1154 01:07:32,100 --> 01:07:33,900 You also have, at the very same time 1155 01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:36,100 the automobile being rammed through. 1156 01:07:39,100 --> 01:07:41,900 This causes as many problems 1157 01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:44,000 as the urban renewal projects. 1158 01:07:47,000 --> 01:07:49,900 The most profound influence 1159 01:07:50,000 --> 01:07:52,400 on the city in the last hundred years 1160 01:07:52,500 --> 01:07:54,200 has been the automobile. 1161 01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:00,500 The decision made almost inevitable 1162 01:08:00,600 --> 01:08:03,100 was to drive the freeways, the interstates in some 1163 01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:06,200 right through the cities and through neighborhoods 1164 01:08:06,300 --> 01:08:08,900 whose value city elites and developers 1165 01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:11,400 wanted to ultimately reclaim. 1166 01:08:14,500 --> 01:08:16,400 We wouldn't have any American economy 1167 01:08:16,500 --> 01:08:18,100 without the automobile business. 1168 01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:20,000 That's literally true. 1169 01:08:20,100 --> 01:08:22,600 I believe that that this is a great industry 1170 01:08:22,700 --> 01:08:24,900 that has to go on and has to keep on turning out 1171 01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:26,700 cars and trucks and buses 1172 01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:28,800 and there have to be places for them to run. 1173 01:08:28,900 --> 01:08:31,300 There have to be modern roads. 1174 01:08:31,400 --> 01:08:33,700 The first of Moses' commandments for progress 1175 01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:36,000 is thou shalt drive. 1176 01:08:42,600 --> 01:08:45,000 Jane Jacobs was one of the very first people 1177 01:08:45,100 --> 01:08:47,800 to say the car is not supreme. 1178 01:08:47,900 --> 01:08:49,800 The people who walk on the sidewalk 1179 01:08:49,900 --> 01:08:52,300 are what makes the city. 1180 01:08:52,400 --> 01:08:54,600 It isn't hard to understand 1181 01:08:54,700 --> 01:08:57,000 that producing and consuming automobiles 1182 01:08:57,100 --> 01:09:00,500 might seem all-important to the management of Ford 1183 01:09:00,600 --> 01:09:03,500 and Chrysler and General Motors. 1184 01:09:03,600 --> 01:09:06,300 But it's harder to understand why the production 1185 01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:09,400 and consumption of automobiles should be the purpose of life 1186 01:09:09,500 --> 01:09:11,300 for all the rest of us. 1187 01:09:14,300 --> 01:09:17,000 Moses was about realizing 1188 01:09:17,100 --> 01:09:20,500 a very particular vision of the American dream. 1189 01:09:20,600 --> 01:09:22,900 That was, you know, what's good for General Motors 1190 01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:25,200 is good for the United States of America. 1191 01:09:25,300 --> 01:09:27,000 I'm privileged to present 1192 01:09:27,100 --> 01:09:29,100 the winner of the Grand National Award. 1193 01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:31,200 Robert Moses of New York. 1194 01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:38,400 Robert Moses, New York City Construction Coordinator 1195 01:09:38,500 --> 01:09:41,000 is a world-famous highway planner. 1196 01:09:41,200 --> 01:09:43,200 A man who knows his business. 1197 01:09:47,500 --> 01:09:49,900 What he was really doing was tearing up vital neighborhoods. 1198 01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:52,300 For example, in the South Bronx 1199 01:09:52,400 --> 01:09:54,500 where he built the Cross Bronx Expressway. 1200 01:10:05,100 --> 01:10:08,000 This was the single most destructive decision 1201 01:10:08,100 --> 01:10:10,000 ever made about US cities. 1202 01:10:10,100 --> 01:10:11,800 The Cross Bronx Expressway 1203 01:10:11,900 --> 01:10:13,900 an artery whose history was marked by 1204 01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:17,500 such gigantic problems of construction, financing 1205 01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:20,300 relocation and organized obstruction 1206 01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:23,000 that it took 17 years to complete. 1207 01:10:33,600 --> 01:10:37,100 The Cross Bronx Expressway ripped through the heart 1208 01:10:37,200 --> 01:10:38,500 and the middle of the Bronx 1209 01:10:38,600 --> 01:10:41,100 creating what was a wall between 1210 01:10:41,200 --> 01:10:42,800 what eventually was known as 1211 01:10:42,900 --> 01:10:44,800 the northern and the southern part of the Bronx. 1212 01:10:47,600 --> 01:10:49,500 Robert Moses thought he'd get away with anything. 1213 01:10:49,600 --> 01:10:50,800 Who's gonna stop him? 1214 01:10:50,900 --> 01:10:52,900 He's got all the city politicians on his side 1215 01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:55,500 because he's bringing a lot of federal money 1216 01:10:55,600 --> 01:10:57,200 from the federal highway program. 1217 01:11:00,300 --> 01:11:02,500 And that gets passed around. 1218 01:11:03,600 --> 01:11:06,500 Today our greatest 1219 01:11:06,600 --> 01:11:10,200 single problem is tenant removal. 1220 01:11:10,300 --> 01:11:12,700 The, uh, tendency on the part 1221 01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:14,700 of people in politics 1222 01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:17,700 as well as those who are living on these 1223 01:11:17,800 --> 01:11:21,000 rights-of-way who are immediately affected 1224 01:11:21,100 --> 01:11:24,100 is to assume that the people who are doing this job 1225 01:11:24,300 --> 01:11:26,100 are unsympathetic. 1226 01:11:26,200 --> 01:11:28,400 They're even sadistic. 1227 01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:32,500 Well, of course, that isn't the truth at all. 1228 01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:36,200 When Moses would ram the Cross Bronx Expressway through 1229 01:11:36,300 --> 01:11:40,000 it was not just breaking down the physical structure 1230 01:11:40,100 --> 01:11:41,600 of that borough literally 1231 01:11:41,700 --> 01:11:44,100 so south and north become different 1232 01:11:44,200 --> 01:11:45,400 but the community. 1233 01:11:47,100 --> 01:11:49,700 When you remove the daily life 1234 01:11:49,700 --> 01:11:52,800 when you remove the stores, you remove the places 1235 01:11:52,900 --> 01:11:56,300 that constitute where they spend time 1236 01:11:56,400 --> 01:11:58,500 what we would call the public realm 1237 01:11:58,600 --> 01:12:02,000 the sidewalks, the bars, the grocery stores 1238 01:12:02,100 --> 01:12:04,300 you remove the city. 1239 01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:06,200 And that's what Jane Jacobs says. 1240 01:12:06,300 --> 01:12:09,900 You draw away the people with a prescription 1241 01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:13,000 that is guaranteed to hurt cities. 1242 01:12:13,100 --> 01:12:15,300 Well, you have to bull it through. You've gotta do it. 1243 01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:18,400 It's like all these, these things that have opposition. 1244 01:12:18,600 --> 01:12:20,700 The fact that 2000 people come and agitate 1245 01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:23,600 against the extension of an expressway 1246 01:12:23,700 --> 01:12:25,800 doesn't prove that you're not gonna build the expressway. 1247 01:12:28,100 --> 01:12:32,400 So many of the problems of the South Bronx grew directly 1248 01:12:32,500 --> 01:12:36,000 out of the devastation caused by building that expressway. 1249 01:12:38,900 --> 01:12:41,000 Which, of course, became totally gridlocked 1250 01:12:41,100 --> 01:12:42,900 15 minutes after it was open. 1251 01:12:45,400 --> 01:12:48,100 I mean, Moses thought he was improving the city 1252 01:12:48,200 --> 01:12:49,900 by bringing it up-to-date 1253 01:12:50,000 --> 01:12:51,800 by making it work for the automobile. 1254 01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:55,500 And as it became clear 1255 01:12:55,600 --> 01:12:59,000 that urban highways were, in fact 1256 01:12:59,100 --> 01:13:02,100 uh, profoundly destructive 1257 01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:06,000 it really became a battle between opposing forces. 1258 01:13:09,500 --> 01:13:11,500 Of course, in Lower Manhattan 1259 01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:14,400 uh, Moses, uh, wanted to build a road 1260 01:13:14,500 --> 01:13:17,400 right across, um, uh, the city there. 1261 01:13:17,500 --> 01:13:18,900 The Whole Cast Iron District 1262 01:13:19,000 --> 01:13:21,000 would've been basically obliterated. 1263 01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:26,400 The Lower Manhattan Expressway 1264 01:13:26,500 --> 01:13:30,900 was to have connected the Holland Tunnel 1265 01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:33,400 with the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges. 1266 01:13:35,700 --> 01:13:37,500 It would've destroyed most of SoHo. 1267 01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:41,900 We would've lost one of the greatest inventories 1268 01:13:42,000 --> 01:13:44,100 of 19th century buildings, not just in New York 1269 01:13:44,200 --> 01:13:45,400 but in the world. 1270 01:13:47,100 --> 01:13:49,100 The highways, of course 1271 01:13:49,200 --> 01:13:50,700 destroyed the neighborhoods 1272 01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:52,300 that they went through. 1273 01:13:52,400 --> 01:13:55,100 Where was this going to end? 1274 01:13:55,200 --> 01:13:59,000 The whole place was going to be laced with highways. 1275 01:13:59,100 --> 01:14:01,200 What would we have left of Manhattan? 1276 01:14:04,500 --> 01:14:08,900 On any day of the week, if you walk along Canal Street 1277 01:14:09,000 --> 01:14:11,000 and it's often faster than riding 1278 01:14:11,100 --> 01:14:12,900 this is what you'll see. 1279 01:14:13,000 --> 01:14:15,600 The crush of endless waiting traffic. 1280 01:14:16,900 --> 01:14:18,700 Now look at the solution. 1281 01:14:18,900 --> 01:14:21,700 A Lower Manhattan Expressway 1282 01:14:21,800 --> 01:14:23,600 only practical highway crossing 1283 01:14:23,700 --> 01:14:24,700 serving the Lower Manhattan 1284 01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:27,500 commercial and business districts. 1285 01:14:27,600 --> 01:14:30,400 Can we afford to let one section of our city 1286 01:14:30,500 --> 01:14:33,300 slowly strangle in hopeless traffic congestion? 1287 01:14:35,100 --> 01:14:37,300 There was an awful campaign against that neighborhood. 1288 01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:39,700 It was called Hell's Hundred Acres. 1289 01:14:39,800 --> 01:14:43,000 A bottled-up, stagnating section of the city. 1290 01:14:43,100 --> 01:14:46,300 No new private buildings erected in 30 years. 1291 01:14:47,800 --> 01:14:51,000 A valley of economic depression. 1292 01:14:51,100 --> 01:14:53,600 The need is urgent. 1293 01:14:53,700 --> 01:14:57,500 We must have a Lower Manhattan Expressway now. 1294 01:15:00,200 --> 01:15:03,400 The local priest in a church on Broom Street 1295 01:15:03,500 --> 01:15:05,500 had heard about Jane's 1296 01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:08,300 successful defenses fighting Moses 1297 01:15:08,400 --> 01:15:10,100 and asked if she could help. 1298 01:15:10,200 --> 01:15:11,900 Father, what effect do you feel 1299 01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:13,600 that the expressway will have on the neighborhood? 1300 01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:18,600 Well, the expressway will, will destroy the neighborhood. 1301 01:15:29,300 --> 01:15:31,800 This is the worst thing about these monumental plans. 1302 01:15:33,900 --> 01:15:35,600 There is no way there 1303 01:15:35,700 --> 01:15:38,100 that old buildings can easily be torn down 1304 01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:39,600 and new ones put up. 1305 01:15:39,700 --> 01:15:41,500 Old things adapted to different use. 1306 01:15:44,300 --> 01:15:45,600 It's settled. 1307 01:15:45,700 --> 01:15:47,400 Well, that's not planning for the future. 1308 01:15:51,200 --> 01:15:53,100 Reminded of some of the opposition 1309 01:15:53,200 --> 01:15:55,200 to his longtime dream for an expressway 1310 01:15:55,300 --> 01:15:57,100 across Lower Manhattan 1311 01:15:57,200 --> 01:15:59,500 Moses was specific about what it takes 1312 01:15:59,600 --> 01:16:02,300 to override the inevitable roadblocks. 1313 01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:03,900 You gotta move people. 1314 01:16:04,000 --> 01:16:06,400 And that, the political leaders 1315 01:16:06,500 --> 01:16:08,600 naturally, if they have people ticketed 1316 01:16:08,700 --> 01:16:10,800 and they know where they are and they vote right 1317 01:16:11,000 --> 01:16:13,700 they don't wanna move 'em and have 'em go somewhere else. 1318 01:16:13,800 --> 01:16:15,700 What I try to do, uh, in New York 1319 01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:18,100 what we've done successfully in other places 1320 01:16:18,200 --> 01:16:21,400 which is to pay more money to people in cash. 1321 01:16:21,500 --> 01:16:23,800 Come take the money and go away. 1322 01:16:23,900 --> 01:16:25,400 You got people who rent. They don't own anything. 1323 01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,200 So what different does it make 1324 01:16:27,300 --> 01:16:29,900 when you're talking about a, uh, an expressway 1325 01:16:30,000 --> 01:16:33,100 that costs 84 million dollars? 1326 01:16:33,200 --> 01:16:34,900 Stop being victims. 1327 01:16:35,000 --> 01:16:36,400 I think it's wicked 1328 01:16:36,500 --> 01:16:38,800 in a way, to be a victim. 1329 01:16:38,900 --> 01:16:40,900 It's even wickeder to be a predator 1330 01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:44,500 but it's wicked to be a victim and allow it. 1331 01:16:46,800 --> 01:16:49,400 You can't, as an individual, you can't do anything 1332 01:16:49,500 --> 01:16:52,000 but you can organize. 1333 01:16:52,100 --> 01:16:55,000 If you're being victimized by an expressway 1334 01:16:55,100 --> 01:16:57,500 that a bureaucracy is putting through 1335 01:16:57,600 --> 01:17:00,100 for the benefit of the automobile people 1336 01:17:00,200 --> 01:17:03,100 then you fight that you refuse to be a victim of that. 1337 01:17:04,700 --> 01:17:05,900 What effect do you think this will have 1338 01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:07,100 on the neighborhood itself? 1339 01:17:07,200 --> 01:17:08,700 It will destroy the neighborhood. 1340 01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:10,300 It's one of the few neighborhoods that you can.. 1341 01:17:10,400 --> 01:17:12,500 A woman can go down the streets at night and be safe. 1342 01:17:12,600 --> 01:17:14,200 And the women know it and I know it. 1343 01:17:14,300 --> 01:17:15,800 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning 1344 01:17:15,900 --> 01:17:17,300 the men are sitting in the cafes 1345 01:17:17,400 --> 01:17:19,000 and they're watching you, taking care of you. 1346 01:17:19,100 --> 01:17:20,700 You wanna build up neighborhoods like this. 1347 01:17:20,800 --> 01:17:23,100 They say let's get back to the old, safe neighborhoods. 1348 01:17:23,200 --> 01:17:24,300 This is it! 1349 01:17:28,900 --> 01:17:31,900 Memorandum to Arthur Hodgkiss from Robert Moses. 1350 01:17:34,300 --> 01:17:37,700 "The Lower Manhattan will move very soon. 1351 01:17:37,800 --> 01:17:39,600 Please keep an eye on it." 1352 01:17:43,000 --> 01:17:44,400 Mr. Simon, are you saying that 1353 01:17:44,500 --> 01:17:45,800 they're trying to sneak it through? 1354 01:17:45,900 --> 01:17:47,900 I would say it's a sleeper. 1355 01:17:48,000 --> 01:17:49,900 If this thing is passed, uh 1356 01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:52,000 these are how these things happen. 1357 01:17:52,100 --> 01:17:54,900 If they're not watched, uh, it's a sleeper. 1358 01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:56,600 Who do you think is pushing this? 1359 01:17:56,700 --> 01:17:59,000 Well, uh, there's only one man 1360 01:17:59,100 --> 01:18:01,900 that I can think of that can be pushing. 1361 01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:03,800 They seem to think that they have a choice. 1362 01:18:03,900 --> 01:18:05,600 That they'd rather stay in the houses 1363 01:18:05,700 --> 01:18:06,900 that they've lived in all this time. 1364 01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:10,300 The whole federal arterial aid program 1365 01:18:10,500 --> 01:18:12,000 running into billions of dollars 1366 01:18:12,100 --> 01:18:14,100 depend upon the votes of a few 1367 01:18:14,200 --> 01:18:15,900 a very few people in one section. 1368 01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:18,800 We wouldn't build anything. Nothing would be built. 1369 01:18:18,900 --> 01:18:21,700 There'd be no highways, there'd be no -- no housing. 1370 01:18:21,800 --> 01:18:23,900 There, there'd be no public improvements. 1371 01:18:24,000 --> 01:18:27,200 Please do not build this express highway. 1372 01:18:27,300 --> 01:18:29,400 Most of these people consider automobiles 1373 01:18:29,500 --> 01:18:31,200 more than the human being. 1374 01:18:31,300 --> 01:18:32,500 It is not right! 1375 01:18:32,600 --> 01:18:34,000 I think it's awful. 1376 01:18:34,100 --> 01:18:35,900 I don't think it's fair. 1377 01:18:36,000 --> 01:18:38,100 I don't think it's very good 1378 01:18:38,200 --> 01:18:41,000 'cause I live there, I look out my window. 1379 01:18:41,100 --> 01:18:42,800 The truck, the car and everything. 1380 01:18:42,900 --> 01:18:45,400 They don't need expressway. 1381 01:18:45,500 --> 01:18:47,800 What they gonna do, throw me in the street? 1382 01:18:47,900 --> 01:18:51,200 After 51 years, I'm citizen and everything? 1383 01:18:51,300 --> 01:18:53,700 There's something awful to think every day 1384 01:18:53,800 --> 01:18:55,400 they gonna throw you out. 1385 01:18:55,500 --> 01:18:58,100 I think it's awful thing. They make me sick. 1386 01:18:58,200 --> 01:19:00,900 I hope God they have to be damn sick. 1387 01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:03,400 That's what I hope. Goodbye. 1388 01:19:03,500 --> 01:19:04,700 Thank you. 1389 01:19:06,900 --> 01:19:10,100 It was gonna be a defining hearing 1390 01:19:10,200 --> 01:19:14,200 in which they would approve the expressway. 1391 01:19:14,300 --> 01:19:17,100 And Jane said, when they discuss this issue 1392 01:19:17,200 --> 01:19:20,700 I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna speak against it. 1393 01:19:20,800 --> 01:19:23,600 I went up, uh, to the microphone. 1394 01:19:23,700 --> 01:19:26,400 I was very angry. They weren't listening to us. 1395 01:19:26,500 --> 01:19:29,100 They had made their decision. That was clear. 1396 01:19:29,200 --> 01:19:31,300 They were really only errand boys 1397 01:19:31,400 --> 01:19:34,100 who had no power to make decisions. 1398 01:19:34,200 --> 01:19:38,000 So we had better let them take back a message. 1399 01:19:38,100 --> 01:19:41,200 We would never stand for this expressway. 1400 01:19:41,300 --> 01:19:44,500 I intended just to climb up to their level 1401 01:19:44,600 --> 01:19:47,000 and walk across the stage. 1402 01:19:47,100 --> 01:19:49,300 There was a stenotypist 1403 01:19:49,400 --> 01:19:51,800 who had a new machine. 1404 01:19:51,900 --> 01:19:53,500 She was frightened 1405 01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:56,700 and she picked up her stenotype machine 1406 01:19:56,800 --> 01:19:59,100 and clasped it to her bosom. 1407 01:19:59,200 --> 01:20:02,100 The tapes fell out of the machine 1408 01:20:02,200 --> 01:20:05,300 and ran across the floor like confetti. 1409 01:20:05,400 --> 01:20:08,000 People began tossing it in the air. 1410 01:20:08,100 --> 01:20:10,300 I knew it had to be brought to an end 1411 01:20:10,400 --> 01:20:13,000 so an inspiration struck me. 1412 01:20:13,100 --> 01:20:16,300 I said, "There is no hearing 1413 01:20:16,400 --> 01:20:18,700 "because the record is gone. 1414 01:20:18,800 --> 01:20:21,100 And without a record, there can't be a hearing." 1415 01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:26,300 The chief state person was saying 1416 01:20:26,400 --> 01:20:29,200 "Arrest that woman. Arrest that woman." 1417 01:20:29,300 --> 01:20:32,700 As I went out, police captain told me that 1418 01:20:32,800 --> 01:20:35,000 uh, I was arrested. 1419 01:20:37,500 --> 01:20:39,300 The police were very apologetic. 1420 01:20:39,400 --> 01:20:41,300 They knew who she was and what was going on. 1421 01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:47,400 She was charged with 3 felonies 1422 01:20:47,500 --> 01:20:50,300 which is pretty rotten for what she did. 1423 01:20:50,400 --> 01:20:52,200 What did she do? She didn't hurt anybody. 1424 01:20:54,200 --> 01:20:56,500 She became the hero. 1425 01:20:56,600 --> 01:21:00,000 And the politics did shift at that point. 1426 01:21:00,100 --> 01:21:03,600 The Board of Estimate in an executive session today 1427 01:21:03,700 --> 01:21:06,400 voted unanimously to turn down the proposal 1428 01:21:06,500 --> 01:21:08,900 for a Lower Manhattan Expressway. 1429 01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:11,000 The board -- Please. 1430 01:21:11,100 --> 01:21:13,100 [Applause] 1431 01:21:20,600 --> 01:21:23,100 That was the decisive moment. 1432 01:21:23,200 --> 01:21:24,400 And Moses couldn't do anything. 1433 01:21:24,500 --> 01:21:26,000 He was just a pure villain. 1434 01:21:26,100 --> 01:21:27,300 The politicians were villains. 1435 01:21:29,100 --> 01:21:31,400 At that point, it was clear that no politicians 1436 01:21:31,500 --> 01:21:33,200 were gonna get away with this. 1437 01:21:36,100 --> 01:21:37,700 The Lower Manhattan Expressway 1438 01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:41,100 was really the beginning of the end for Robert Moses. 1439 01:21:44,800 --> 01:21:47,500 Robert Moses was finally squeezed out 1440 01:21:47,600 --> 01:21:50,900 by Nelson Rockefeller, who as Governor of New York 1441 01:21:51,000 --> 01:21:53,300 might have been the first public official 1442 01:21:53,400 --> 01:21:56,500 powerful enough to call his bluff. 1443 01:21:56,600 --> 01:21:58,900 Moses was famous for threatening to resign 1444 01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:00,300 when he was unhappy with something. 1445 01:22:00,400 --> 01:22:03,700 Rockefeller said at one point okay 1446 01:22:03,900 --> 01:22:05,700 and Moses had no choice. 1447 01:22:05,900 --> 01:22:09,200 He couldn't back down and he was gone. 1448 01:22:12,000 --> 01:22:15,500 After the Moses' expressway situation was finally settled 1449 01:22:15,600 --> 01:22:18,200 Jane felt she could go to Canada with her typewriter 1450 01:22:18,300 --> 01:22:20,100 and become a writer again. 1451 01:22:20,200 --> 01:22:21,800 Her husband, who was an architect 1452 01:22:21,900 --> 01:22:23,800 was building hospitals up there. 1453 01:22:23,900 --> 01:22:26,000 And their sons were there be, to keep out of the 1454 01:22:26,100 --> 01:22:28,400 that awful Vietnam War. 1455 01:22:28,500 --> 01:22:30,400 Of course, as soon as she got to Toronto 1456 01:22:30,500 --> 01:22:33,000 she, she saw there was another expressway 1457 01:22:33,100 --> 01:22:34,500 heading right for her house 1458 01:22:34,600 --> 01:22:36,300 the Spadina Expressway. 1459 01:22:36,400 --> 01:22:37,600 She stopped that too. 1460 01:22:39,100 --> 01:22:41,300 And then got to work. 1461 01:22:41,400 --> 01:22:42,900 The Lower Manhattan Expressway 1462 01:22:43,000 --> 01:22:46,800 was officially dead in the year 1970. 1463 01:22:46,900 --> 01:22:48,800 Meanwhile, across the country 1464 01:22:48,900 --> 01:22:51,800 these kinds of freeway revolts were taking place 1465 01:22:51,900 --> 01:22:56,000 and similar roadways were being defeated. 1466 01:22:56,100 --> 01:22:57,700 But the Lower Manhattan Expressway 1467 01:22:57,800 --> 01:23:00,000 was really the leading example. 1468 01:23:03,000 --> 01:23:05,800 If that had happened, there would be no SoHo. 1469 01:23:05,900 --> 01:23:08,900 The entire history of development 1470 01:23:09,000 --> 01:23:12,200 and redevelopment and adaptive reuse in the city 1471 01:23:12,300 --> 01:23:13,700 would've played out in a different way. 1472 01:23:15,200 --> 01:23:18,900 It would've been the single most 1473 01:23:19,000 --> 01:23:21,800 damaging intervention in the urban fabric 1474 01:23:21,900 --> 01:23:24,400 in Manhattan in the 20th century, period. 1475 01:23:37,700 --> 01:23:40,600 A city is not just a physical object. 1476 01:23:44,400 --> 01:23:46,200 The city is a living thing. 1477 01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:50,200 It will always morph and change. 1478 01:23:51,900 --> 01:23:55,700 Our goal has to be to manage change well 1479 01:23:55,800 --> 01:23:57,900 not to freeze it in time. 1480 01:24:01,500 --> 01:24:04,400 As cities around the world are obliged to house 1481 01:24:04,500 --> 01:24:07,500 this dramatically increasing population 1482 01:24:07,600 --> 01:24:10,400 we still have the conversation in terms of 1483 01:24:10,500 --> 01:24:12,900 top down versus bottom up 1484 01:24:13,000 --> 01:24:15,400 formality versus informality. 1485 01:24:15,500 --> 01:24:17,500 These are the eternal polarities 1486 01:24:17,600 --> 01:24:19,400 of thinking about the city. 1487 01:24:25,700 --> 01:24:28,100 If you go to China, you see huge swathes 1488 01:24:28,200 --> 01:24:31,200 of farmland that are now being urbanized 1489 01:24:31,300 --> 01:24:35,600 in exactly the model that America used in 1950s 1490 01:24:35,700 --> 01:24:37,500 and we know that it failed. 1491 01:24:40,500 --> 01:24:43,600 China today is Moses on steroids, you know. 1492 01:24:43,700 --> 01:24:48,400 And the notion that Moses could not have conceived 1493 01:24:48,500 --> 01:24:53,000 of this extraordinary scaling up 1494 01:24:53,100 --> 01:24:54,900 of what it means to build. 1495 01:24:56,800 --> 01:24:59,200 In that sense, history has outdone him. 1496 01:25:01,900 --> 01:25:05,000 These isolated developments 1497 01:25:05,100 --> 01:25:07,400 with hundreds of similar-looking blocks 1498 01:25:07,600 --> 01:25:10,000 with no urbanism, no street 1499 01:25:10,100 --> 01:25:13,600 who can live in them and how would you live in them? 1500 01:25:13,700 --> 01:25:16,100 What they are building today, I think.. 1501 01:25:17,500 --> 01:25:19,300 ...is the slums of the future. 1502 01:25:23,100 --> 01:25:24,400 And they're made in concrete. 1503 01:25:24,500 --> 01:25:26,800 They're gonna last at least 60 years. 1504 01:25:26,900 --> 01:25:29,600 We are condemning future generations 1505 01:25:29,700 --> 01:25:32,000 to an absolute world without hope. 1506 01:25:36,500 --> 01:25:39,500 Given the scale of the problem we have 1507 01:25:39,600 --> 01:25:42,500 that makes a completely different context.. 1508 01:25:44,100 --> 01:25:47,200 ...in which Jane Jacobs' ideas again now 1509 01:25:47,300 --> 01:25:49,300 have a new incarnation. 1510 01:25:55,500 --> 01:25:57,600 "It is so easy to blame the decay of cities 1511 01:25:57,700 --> 01:26:00,100 "on traffic or immigrants.. 1512 01:26:02,300 --> 01:26:05,300 "...or the whimsies of the middle class. 1513 01:26:05,400 --> 01:26:08,000 "The decay of cities goes deeper and is more complicated. 1514 01:26:10,100 --> 01:26:12,600 "It goes right down to what we think we want 1515 01:26:12,700 --> 01:26:14,700 and to our ignorance about how cities work." 1516 01:26:18,200 --> 01:26:20,800 With the amount of people who now need to live in cities 1517 01:26:20,900 --> 01:26:25,000 you have to accept that you're going to need more density. 1518 01:26:25,100 --> 01:26:27,800 But a lot of densely built up terrain.. 1519 01:26:29,700 --> 01:26:31,300 ...is not a city. 1520 01:26:35,200 --> 01:26:37,300 If, when we're to build a city 1521 01:26:37,400 --> 01:26:40,100 no matter how fast it is 1522 01:26:40,200 --> 01:26:42,300 without building a great public realm 1523 01:26:42,400 --> 01:26:44,000 you don't have a city. 1524 01:26:44,100 --> 01:26:46,000 That's what Jane Jacobs talks about. 1525 01:26:46,100 --> 01:26:49,500 Historically, solutions to city problems 1526 01:26:49,600 --> 01:26:51,400 have very seldom come from the top. 1527 01:26:55,300 --> 01:26:56,400 They come from people 1528 01:26:56,500 --> 01:26:59,800 who understand the problems firsthand 1529 01:26:59,900 --> 01:27:01,100 'cause they're living with them 1530 01:27:01,200 --> 01:27:04,100 and who have new and ingenious 1531 01:27:04,300 --> 01:27:08,200 and often very offbeat ideas of how to solve them. 1532 01:27:16,000 --> 01:27:18,700 The creativity and the concern 1533 01:27:18,800 --> 01:27:22,400 and the ideas down there in city neighborhoods 1534 01:27:22,500 --> 01:27:25,700 and city communities has to be given a chance 1535 01:27:25,800 --> 01:27:26,800 has to be released. 1536 01:27:26,900 --> 01:27:29,000 People have to insist on government 1537 01:27:29,100 --> 01:27:31,600 trying things their way. 1538 01:27:34,600 --> 01:27:36,200 If you gave people an environment 1539 01:27:36,300 --> 01:27:38,200 that they could shape themselves 1540 01:27:38,300 --> 01:27:39,900 they would not only be happier.. 1541 01:27:42,200 --> 01:27:43,500 ...but you would have a completely 1542 01:27:43,600 --> 01:27:45,100 different kind of city. 1543 01:27:48,900 --> 01:27:51,900 The problem for people who are planning 1544 01:27:52,000 --> 01:27:55,800 and designing and thinking about all this new urban tissue 1545 01:27:55,900 --> 01:27:59,200 that's being created is how to take some of these 1546 01:27:59,300 --> 01:28:02,700 incredibly valuable lessons that Jane Jacobs teaches 1547 01:28:02,800 --> 01:28:05,200 um, and apply them to the project of creating 1548 01:28:05,300 --> 01:28:07,900 the places where, uh, all of these 1549 01:28:08,000 --> 01:28:09,900 billions of people are going to live. 1550 01:28:12,800 --> 01:28:15,300 The key thing about Jane Jacobs 1551 01:28:15,400 --> 01:28:18,900 much more important than loving stoops and streets and stuff 1552 01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:22,100 was a willingness to be skeptical 1553 01:28:22,200 --> 01:28:25,400 a willingness to doubt the received wisdom.. 1554 01:28:26,900 --> 01:28:29,500 ...and to trust our eyes instead. 1555 01:28:39,100 --> 01:28:42,900 "Under the seeming disorder of the old city 1556 01:28:43,000 --> 01:28:45,400 "wherever the old city is working successfully.. 1557 01:28:47,700 --> 01:28:50,100 "...is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety 1558 01:28:50,200 --> 01:28:52,100 "of the street 1559 01:28:52,200 --> 01:28:54,200 "and the freedom of the city. 1560 01:28:57,300 --> 01:28:59,100 "It is a complex order. 1561 01:29:01,900 --> 01:29:04,500 "This order is all composed of movement and change. 1562 01:29:06,300 --> 01:29:08,100 "And although it is life, not art.. 1563 01:29:10,100 --> 01:29:12,500 "...we may fancifully call it the art form of the city.. 1564 01:29:14,700 --> 01:29:16,900 "...and liken it to the dance. 1565 01:29:17,000 --> 01:29:20,600 "Not to a simpleminded precision dance 1566 01:29:20,700 --> 01:29:23,500 "with everyone kicking up at the same time 1567 01:29:23,600 --> 01:29:26,200 "twirling in unison and bowing off en masse.. 1568 01:29:28,500 --> 01:29:31,500 "...but to an intricate ballet 1569 01:29:31,600 --> 01:29:34,200 "in which the individual dancers and ensembles 1570 01:29:34,300 --> 01:29:36,200 "all have distinctive parts.. 1571 01:29:38,300 --> 01:29:40,700 "...which miraculously reinforce each other.. 1572 01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:45,300 ...and compose an orderly whole." 1573 01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:56,400 [Instrumental music] 121915

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