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How Bloomberg's urban development relies on a blending of Moses and Jacobs
"Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind"
Contemporary Planning in New York City
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Scott Larson
"In ‘Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind’ is a critical book because the Bloomberg administration's slick public relations have given him support and consensus across the political spectrum for his hugely unfair and unsustainable growth strategy. Larson unravels Bloomberg's skillful manipulation of the myths surrounding Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs."
—Tom Angotti, author of New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate and The New Century of the Metropolis: Urban Enclaves and Orientalism
The antagonism between urbanist and writer Jane Jacobs and master builder Robert Moses may frame debates over urban form, but in "Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind," Scott Larson aims to use the Moses-Jacobs rivalry as a means for examining and understanding the New York City administration's redevelopment strategies and actions. By showing how the Bloomberg administration's plans borrow selectively from Moses' and Jacobs' writing, Larson lays bare the contradictions buried in such rhetoric and argues that there can be no equitable solution to the social and economic goals for redevelopment in New York City with such a strategy.
"Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind" offers a lively critique that shows how the legacies of these two planners have been interpreted—and reinterpreted—over time and with the evolution of urban space. Ultimately, he makes the case that neither figure offers a meaningful model for addressing stubborn problems—poverty, lack of affordable housing, and segregation along class and racial lines—that continue to vex today's cities.
Excerpt
Reviews
"‘Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind’ is an insightful and nuanced assessment of Moses and Jacobs, moving the discussion of these two major figures beyond the simplistic caricatures and easy dualisms that have characterized so much of the debate to date. Larson’s valuable book admirably succeeds in examining the conflict between Moses and Jacobs not only in its historical context but also in terms of the legacy it created and how that legacy affects contemporary planning practice in multiple and unexpected ways. In sum, the book provides a powerful and fascinating account of the ideas, forces, and ideologies driving planning and development in New York City over a fifty-year period, and it effectively situates the major planning initiatives of the current administration in their historical, ideological, and political-economic context."
—Robert Lake, Professor and Graduate Director in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Jacobs versus Moses: A Fight for the City’s Soul
2. The “Patron Saint” and the “Git’r Done Man”
3. The Bloomberg Practice
4. Calls for a New Moses
5. Planning and the Narrative of Threat
6. The Armature for Development
7. Ideas That Converge
8. Ideas That Travel
9. Design as Civic Virtue
10. Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind
Notes
References
Index
About the Author(s)
Scott Larson is an independent scholar who has taught geography and urban studies at Vassar College, Queens College, and Hunter College.
Subject Categories
Urban Studies
Political Science and Public Policy
Geography
In the series
Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy, edited by Zane L. Miller, David Stradling, and Larry Bennett.
Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy Series, edited by Zane L. Miller, David Stradling, and Larry Bennett, features books that examine past and contemporary cities, focusing on cultural and social issues. The editors seek proposals that analyze processes of urban change relevant to the future of cities and their metropolitan regions, and that examine urban and regional planning, environmental issues, and urban policy studies, thus contributing to ongoing debates.