Editor's note: Recently I watched a new documentary this year, Citizen Jane: Battle For The City, and I would like to recommend it to all those who live in the city, love the city, and care about the future development of the city.
Source | Half-City Club (ID: banchengdushu)
Author | False sheet x Pslin
The film is about the 1950s and 1960s, when New York faces an existential battle:
Ambitious and powerful city managers and planners try to build large-scale residential neighborhoods and wide highways in New York — yes, similar to today's Second Ring Road, Third Ring Road, Fourth Ring, Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, Inner Ring Road and Outer Ring Road in Shanghai, and the kind of grand, eight-lane, ten-lane roads scattered throughout other large and medium-sized Cities in China;
On the other side, there are many ordinary New Yorkers who fear that such a plan will damage the original mechanism of the city, deprive New Yorkers of their proud urban vitality, and turn New York into another soulless steel and concrete forest.
The largest group of them is women, who want to fight for a free and happy environment for their children.
The goals of both sides are actually the same, both for the long-term development of New York, but there are fundamental differences in their philosophy in how to achieve this.
One of the differences is: Whose city is it? When planning, do you put pedestrians and citizens first, or do you put cars and buildings first?
The two sides waged a fierce war that lasted for decades, the outcome of which we all know now: ambitious construction plans were eventually abandoned, and most of the important urban public spaces such as Greenwich Village, SoHo District, Washington Square, etc., were preserved, perpetuating the culture of the community.
New York chose to embrace the mother's love for her child over the terrible plans that were dehumanizing and destroyed the New York spirit.
Therefore, Manhattan, an extremely prosperous place, can continue to become an extremely pedestrianized city, so that everyone who is in it can feel comfortable and happy.
One of my favorite things to do in New York is walking, and on a nice day, I often walk straight from the office for an hour to walk home from work.
The streets of New York have this magic that no matter how long you walk, you will not feel tired, you will not feel tired, and walking itself becomes an addictive thing.
And, of course, thanks to the new Yorkers of decades ago who stepped forward to defend their city.
Let me start from scratch.
Fifth Avenue Extension Program
This article is a selection of planner's notes: Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, New York, also known as the West Village, the low rent and humanistic social place attract many writers, cultural people and artists and other people from different professional backgrounds to live, plus New York University is also here, so it has formed a diverse and vibrant community atmosphere.
Such a free and unrestrained atmosphere has also stimulated the artistic and cultural creativity of an entire generation. In that era, it was the birthplace of the Beat generation and the sacred capital of bohemianism.
In the heart of Greenwich Village, there is a place called Washington Square Park. It is said to be a park, but it is actually just a huge civic square, like all small parks in New York, there is no wall, and any pedestrian can freely enter and exit.
Every day, idle New Yorkers sit here chatting, reading, listening to music and basking in the sun, and I've even seen people playing the piano there.
If you've been there, you'll love the atmosphere.
However, the park was once in jeopardy — New York City wanted to expand Fifth Avenue, which was originally north of the park, to the south through the park.
If implemented, not only will the park cease to exist, but many vibrant neighborhoods throughout the West Village will be affected.
Moses vs Jacobs
Speaking of which, the two protagonists of this city defense war are about to appear.
One of the people who represented the city managers was Robert Moses.
Although he has never served as mayor or governor, he has all the powers and resources, and he is also the director of parks in the greater New York area, the director of construction, and the head of the inter-district bridge and tunnel special zone.
One of his most famous opponents was Jane Jacobs, the title of Citizen Jane, who was the representative of the civic side of the city's defense war.
Jacobs was not an expert on urban planning, she was just a journalist and writer who was obsessed with observing, analyzing, and studying cities.
Despite her high school education, her seven books on the city have continued to influence generations.
One of the most famous books, "Death and Life in America's Great Cities", translated into many languages and reprinted countless times, still deeply influences the urban planning concepts of countries around the world.
This book bears witness to the beginning and end of this urban defense war, and it is also a profound reflection on the history of urbanization in the United States in the 20th century.
Moses saw many problems in the development of the city of New York, but the solution he proposed was simple and crude.
The urban renewal projects he advocated, influenced by the mainstream "modernist" urban planning thinking at the time, used large-scale infrastructure as a means of transformation to try to solve all urban problems by changing the physical environment.
The original dilapidated and decaying neighborhoods were uprooted and replaced by large tracts of highly homogeneous, individualistic, lifeless, isolated high-rise buildings.
He was obsessed with building skyscrapers, super roads, and elevated roads, and wanted to create a super city made of reinforced concrete.
But what Moses didn't realize, or didn't care about, was the cost of doing so?
The wind blowing by Corbusier
Moses' planning concept originally came from the Swiss architect Le Corbusier.
In 1925, Le Corbusier made a version of the urban plan for Paris, in which Corbusier demolished the old center of Paris, evenly arranged cross-shaped skyscrapers within nearly 5 square kilometers of vacated areas, and built oversized roads for cars.
This futuristic-looking urban planning has stunned the self-styled French, who can't imagine how to drink open-air coffee in the shadow of the building's huge shadow, or accept that the historic city they are proud of has become a square box and an oversized road.
The French finally graciously rejected Le Corbusier's design.
Unexpectedly, the United States, far away on the other side of the Atlantic, favored Le Corbusier's idea; the way cars were just beginning to develop was in line with his car-oriented urban planning. Le Corbusier's unfinished planning concept has just crossed the ocean and taken root in the United States.
In many cities across the United States, centralized houses similar to today's Urban Communities in China were built. Moses and the New York he controls are the leaders of this wave of demolition and construction in the United States.
However, Moses did not gain a good reputation for doing so, and many people began to oppose his actions, seeing him as a demon, tyrant, and dictator who destroyed the city.
Jacobs rose to prominence in the campaign against Moses and became a leading figure.
She believes that the essence of the city is not architecture, but people, public space, streets, and the interaction between people and people; communities and communities need to be connected to each other, and they need public spaces that everyone can easily enter.
You can easily erect tall buildings, but what you can't transplant is the kind of urban vibrancy that comes naturally in the streets and neighborhoods that form.
Jacobs argues that "cities, like the ecosystems of nature, are made up of many subtle and complex relationships, although they often have a chaotic appearance." ”
Shopkeepers, bartenders, and other city dwellers have all interacted with each other to form a vast "community neighborhood" relationship. None of this is "planned", but elastic, free to grow – this is a "living" city.
Moses' defeat
The Fifth Avenue Extension Plan was led by Moses.
In addition, he plans to urbanize Greenwich Village, replacing the old, chaotic but vibrant neighborhoods with glamorous high-rise buildings and well-organized streets. This is nothing less than a crazy disaster for the local population.
Real estate developers and politicians have raised their hands in favor of the plan because large-scale construction means they can profit from it.
But ordinary New Yorkers voted against it with their actions. Countless ordinary people took to the streets to protest this simple and crude plan.
The battle for the defense of the city, which lasted for more than 20 years, began.
Jacobs decided to stand in solidarity with the campaign to protect Washington Square Park. She demonstrated her outstanding organizational mobilization ability and personality charm, and mobilized the neighbors.
She set up the "Nishimura Rescue Committee" to use this big white fork to represent her opposition to the city.
I think, in a sense, you can think of the ubiquitous X in New York as an inverse to the word "demolition" that can be seen everywhere in China today—because it means, "no demolition."
She also sued the City of New York, seeking legal avenues to block New York City's urban renewal program.
The voice of opposition has become louder and louder, forming a public opinion pressure that cannot be underestimated.
In 1940, the City of New York was forced to issue a final directive to Moses' Fifth Avenue Extension and Urban Renewal Program— "indefinite delay."
New Yorkers finally know that they don't have to passively accept the blueprint drawn for them by the city manager in the office, they can stand up against it and speak out their will.
This was the first major setback suffered by Moses, who had once been invincible.
An enraged Moses thus said, "No one opposed this plan, no, no, no one, just a bunch of mothers!" ”
However, this hard-won victory is only just the beginning
Moses continued to agitate the New York City government to launch urban renewal programs one after another.
For example, the later Lower Manhattan Elevated Road Project, which prepared to build a ten-lane giant highway, split the Soho District, Little Italy District and other important neighborhoods in New York, and was expected to demolish 416 buildings.
If this plan were to be implemented, the famous cast iron buildings in SoHo, the world's best-preserved and largest 19th-century complex, would also be demolished.
Along the road, people who originally lived there will also have to be forced to move.
So Jacobs and ordinary New Yorkers continued to take to the streets and fight.
I was very impressed by the fact that at a rally, a young girl from a small Italian section said:
The neighborhood is safe now, and if a single woman walks down the street at two o'clock in the middle of the night, she will not feel afraid, because she knows that people in roadside cafes will see everything that happens on the street; and if it becomes a wide road and the small businesses on the side of the road are demolished, pedestrians will not be safe.
This is Jacobs's philosophy: the roadside shop is the watchful eye of the city.
Politicians and real estate developers in New York naturally hated Jacobs to the bone. At a rally in 1968, a plainclothes policeman arrested Jacobs. Subsequently, she was charged with three felonies.
However, at that time, the media represented by the New York Times expressed solidarity with Jacobs. After a trial, the court finally acquitted the charges.
Under the ongoing struggle of New Yorkers, the city council finally voted down the plan to lower the elevated road. Moses suffered another major setback and has since faded out of the field of urban planning.
The decades-long battle to defend the city ended in the victory of the citizens of New York.
We are replicating a lot of the mistakes that the United States made in the last century
The reason why Jacobs is regarded as the hero of this struggle, in addition to her own strong sense of justice and the courage to speak out for the weak, more importantly, she is the one who "can see the true value of the city".
Objectively speaking, the government is indeed doing its own work, but the work content of these "correct policies" is not welcomed by his citizens.
For New Yorkers, their vision of the city is that everyone can have an urban environment that creates interesting things together, which is the New York spirit that New Yorkers are proud of, and the secret of New York's long-term vitality.
Therefore, the Jacobs side, which represents the citizens, is like a firefighter fighting a fire, fighting again and again for a precarious community.
Jacobs's ideas about urban planning, which were considered heresy when she first proposed them, and even led to several arrests, have become common knowledge in Americans today.
At the end of the documentary "Citizen Jane's", there is a special mention of China's current unprecedented city-building movement, with countless high-rise buildings rising from the ground.
The film comments that China's cities are "replicating the mistakes of the United States in the last century on an unexpected scale."
At the heart of Jacobs' philosophy is people-oriented—cities don't belong to buildings, they don't belong to roads, they don't belong to cars, they belong to pedestrians and citizens.
In New York today, many neighborhoods are still "neighborhood-like", and when you get tired of walking on the side of the road, you can sit on the steps of someone else's house and take a break, or go to a small park on the side of the road and sit down on a bench.
No matter where you sit, as soon as you sit down, you feel that the whole city becomes vivid, and you can feel that the city welcomes you and can be occupied by you.
Chinese cities, on the contrary, follow the idea of Moses, which in essence ignores and excludes people, and you will feel neglected and despised.
The bigger the city, the more people feel small. The big difference in this feeling comes in large part from urban planning.
The most typical example is probably today's Beijing: there are huge roads so wide that pedestrians are terrified, from one side of the road to the other, it takes ten minutes to walk into the sky.
■ Source: Two Mockingbirds, Half City Society
■ Edit: Planner's Notes
Source: Planner's Notes
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