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Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City This short book details the protests inspired and led by Jane Jacobs against various projects spearheaded by Robert Moses in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950’s and 60’s.

It is extremely well researched and much more substantial than the biography of Jane Jacobs by Alice Alexiou. Actually, it deals not only with Jane Jacobs’ life but also with Robert Moses’. Anecdotally, it even includes poems written by Jacobs and Moses in their student days! The photographs add significantly to the contents and are very revealing of the times.

The essence of the book is narrative but the analytical epilogue is of the greatest interest with respect to the true impact of both protagonists on our cities and our ways of thinking. It could actually be read quite separately from the rest of the work.

Sadly, the layout in the hardcover version is blandly traditional with the strictly black and white photographs grouped together in unnumbered pages towards the middle of the book.

Worse, the writing style is hampered by an organization that is thematic and not strictly chronological. This leads of course to some repetition from one chapter to another. The lack of chronology sometimes also confusingly occurs within a single paragraph. The High Line Park of 2009 is for instance introduced in the discussion of freight transportation in the 60’s.

Overall, however, this book is warmly recommended to those curious and concerned with the development of cities and its history.
: To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. The activist, writer, and mother of three grew so fond of her bustling community that it became a touchstone for her landmark book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, saw things differently: neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal.” Notorious for exacting enormous human costs, Moses’s plans had never before been halted–not by governors, mayors, or FDR himself, and certainly not by a housewife from Scranton.

The epic rivalry of Jacobs and Moses, played out amid the struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. In Wrestling with Moses, acclaimed reporter and urban planning policy expert Anthony Flint recounts this thrilling David-and-Goliath story, the legacy of which echoes through our society today.

The first ordinary citizens to stand up to government plans for their city, Jacobs and her colleagues began a nationwide movement to reclaim cities for the benefit of their residents. Time and again, Jacobs marshaled popular support and political power against Moses, whether to block traffic through her beloved Washington Square Park or to prevent the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a ten-lane elevated superhighway that would have destroyed centuries-old streetscapes and displaced thousands of families and businesses.

Like A Civil Action before it, Wrestling with Moses is the tale of a local battle with far-ranging significance. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city, and inspired citizens across the country to protest destructive projects in their own communities. Her story reminds us of the power we have as individuals to confront and defy reckless authority.
Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)
• Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York
• Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
• Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability

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