I recently read Anthony Flint’s new book, Wrestling with Moses – the story of Jane Jacobs and her successful civic campaigns against Robert Moses' drastic urban renewal projects of the 1950’s.  The book reveals how attitudes towards public involvement – not to mention attitudes towards what is good for the public – have been changing significantly since this time in regards to urban planning. 

As many people know, Moses gained a reputation as a ruthless figure who disregarded the opinion of the people, quickly realizing that their input was an obstacle to the implementation of his projects. Jane Jacobs, on the other hand, saw the value of her own Greenwich Village neighborhood and refused to see it, or any neighborhood, demolished for Moses’ urban renewal projects, even ones that Moses claimed would create affordable housing.  She worked to shift planning decisions from the top-down to the ground-up and became a highly successful community organizer.  A main criticism of Jacobs is that her own theories on preservation led to gentrification.  For example, the blighted neighborhood she worked to preserve decades ago has today become New York's upscale SoHo section - inaccessible to many because Jacobs protested any attempts to allow large-scale affordable housing.

Ultimately, Flint concludes that while the Moses way of thinking has certainly now been replaced, Jacobs’ attitudes may have contributed to today’s NIMBY (Not In My int argues that the infrastructure that Moses pushed and the community Backyard) phenomenon in which citizens don’t want to see change of any kind, even if it is necessary and progressive.  As planners strive to give citizens public ownership, increased input and veto power in planning decisions, they are finding more of their plans stopped in their tracks, raising the question of preservation versus progress.  To what degree can you keep a city unchanging and, as Flint says, “under glass”? Citizens must work to understand the goals of urban planning and work with, not against, planners.