Placemaking Week

This feature-length documentary tells the story of how writer and activist Jane Jacobs—one of the forerunners of the placemaking movement—fought to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s.

In 1961, Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities. Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city.

This film retraces the battles for the city, as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient texts, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today through the lens of one of its greatest champions.

Free for conference attendees.