Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

"Wrestling With Moses" is the true story of how a small group of neighbors challenged, and stopped, rampaging development in New York City, led by Robert Moses. Jane Jacobs formed her ideas for her brilliant "Death and Life of Great American Cities" in the struggles to save Washington Square Park, and many neighborhoods, countering Moses's approach of total demoition and replacement by roads and instant slum housing projects. It is hard today to comprehend how Moses held so much power, staying in charge through five mayors, but Jane Jacobs and her neighbors offer lessons for taking on today's stone-wall bureaucracies. Anthony Flint clearly likes the late Jane Jacobs, but gives Moses his full due. A good read for anyone interested in politics, urban studies, or involved in fighting wrong-headed development (like the proposed I-10 Bypass in my rural Arizona neighborhood).

According to the urbanist and civic activist Jane Jacobs, author of the modern classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," a city is made great by the diversity of its neighborhoods, which are in themselves the organic growth and interactions of buildings, streets, and people: cities are not planned, but grown and nurtured by the people who live in them. That's the completely opposite approach of the master builder Robert Moses, who saw New York City as wild, sprawling, and restless, and which needed to be tamed, structured, and controlled by the sheer power of his will and imagination. It is the epic struggle between these unlikely enemies -- one a fiercely ambitious Yale graduate who controlled most of the city's construction and a soft-spoken self-educated mother of three -- that the former Boston Globe architecture correspondent Anthony Flint chronicles in "Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City."

In the epilogue Mr. Flint writes that Jane Jacobs offered help and information to a young Newsday reporter by the name of Robert Caro while he was researching his epic "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York." The book was much too long, and Robert Caro had to cut out the chapter on Jane Jacobs. Mr. Caro was writing a book about Robert Moses, and there is little reason to suspect that, so busy with his epic battles with American President Franklin Roosevelt and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as well as overseeing his vast empire that could at any time be responsible for over two thousand construction projects, Mr. Moses paid any attention to a committed but ultimately powerless urban activist by the name of Jane Jacobs. By the time of Jane Jacobs' ascent, culminating with the 1961 publication of her classic tome on what makes a city great the seeds of Robert Moses' decline had already been planted: his arrogance, his pride, his absolutely loyalty to his corrupt functionaries, his disregard for and contempt of his fellow beings, and his relentless power-mongering all caused his spectacular descent from power after spending a lifetime methodically and meticulously rising to the top. To suggest that Jane Jacobs or one book or one movement could take down this titan as Anthony Flint and many thinkers suggest is slightly ridiculous. Robert Moses made too many enemies, and his ideas didn't work: his highways and transportation grids caused more problems -- mainly traffic -- than they solved, and his urban renewal plans destroyed neighborhoods, livelihoods, and lives. Living in and witnessing the Age of Moses, an intelligent observer such as Jane Jacobs could see exactly what was wrong.

Mr. Flint's book draws on shamelessly from other works, and there is very little original research that the author himself conducted. On his section on Robert Moses Mr. Flint breathlessly summarizes "The Power Broker." Yet, ironically, even though Mr. Flint's book is ostensibly about Jane Jacobs, and Mr. Caro's book is about Robert Moses, it's Mr. Flint's book that best captures the spirit of Robert Moses and Mr. Caro's book that captures best the spirit of Jane Jacobs.

Robert Moses liked to plan big projects and construct them as quickly as he could, and "Wrestling with Moses" certainly feels that way: it sounds like an excellent story, but the story of the struggle reads too artificial and mechanical. Like most of Robert Moses' structures there's no life and soul in "Wrestling with Moses": it's just there.

And if it were a city "The Power Broker" would be Jane Jacob's ideal: each chapter is sprawling, diverse, and overflowing. Each chapter feels like its own neighborhood, with its own collection of diverse people, structures, philosophy, and language. You can roam each chapter of "The Power Broker" at your own pace, feel alive in it, and know that if you come back you'll always find new things to interest you. Like all great pieces of literature and great neighborhoods "The Power Broker" will continue to interact with people in different ways at different times.

Surprisingly shallow treatment of the two dynamic leaders butting heads over differing visions. The author manages to present a richly dramatic story in a way that robs it of drama and personality. 'Thin' may be the best descriptor for this book - anyone expecting an in-depth understanding of either these people or these times should be made aware that this book will tell you the basic story, but leave you hungry for more. The author tries to rise to the challenge - but he has not spent the time or the energy to write anything definitive. Read Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses to encounter the real deal.

Special mention should be made of the poor editing - practically identical sentences in consecutive paragraphs was one that made me wince. But a strong editor who sent the author back better comments might have improved this book considerably.

All that said, I did manage to finish it - Jane Jacobs is an interesting figure, and this is the first attempt at her biography I had read. But, of course, you would do better just to read her books.