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Downtown Is for People: Competing Visions of the Ideal American City

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The Past and Future City
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Abstract

America’s welcome urban revival invites important questions: What makes a city successful? Why does one neighborhood thrive and another fail? What are the key urban ingredients for prosperity and happiness?

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

—Jane Jacobs

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 238.

  2. 2.

    Jacobs, Death and Life, 187.

  3. 3.

    Anthony Flint, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (New York: Random House, 2009), 122.

  4. 4.

    Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Payson and Clarke Ltd., 1929), 244.

  5. 5.

    Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 62, 60, xxi, 15, 22, 12, 24. Jacobs, Death and Life, 21. Gili Merin, “AD Classics: Ville Radieuse/Le Corbusier,” Arch Daily, August 11, 2013, http://www.archdaily.com/411878/ad-classics-ville-radieuse-le-corbusier/. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Touchstone, 1993), 72–73, 78–80.

  6. 6.

    Kunstler, Geography of Nowhere, 78–79.

  7. 7.

    Paul Goldberger, “Robert Moses, Master Builder, Is Dead at 92,” New York Times, July 30, 1981, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1218.html. Anthony Flint, Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow (New York: New Harvest, 2014), 52–53, 203. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, xv, 48–49. Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage, 1974), 829, 834, 839, 909. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 51. Goldberger, “Robert Moses, Master Builder.”

  8. 8.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 106, 142. Kunstler, Geography of Nowhere, 100.

  9. 9.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, xv, 106, 188, 142. Kunstler, Geography of Nowhere, 100. Robert Moses, “Are Cities Dead?,” Atlantic, January 1962, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1962/01/are-cities-dead/306546/.

  10. 10.

    Caro, The Power Broker, 848, 866–67.

  11. 11.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 9. Robert Brandes Gratz, “Planners and the Jane Jacobs Conundrum,” Planetizen, April 25, 2011, http://www.planetizen.com/node/49100.

  12. 12.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 19–20. Christopher Pierznik, “The Father of Modern Philadelphia: The (Un-)making of a City,” Medium, February 13, 2015, https://medium.com/@pierzy/the-father-of-modern-philadelphia-cc2373717a45. National Building Museum, “The Father of Modern Philadelphia,” January 22, 2014, http://www.nbm.org/about-us/national-building-museum-online/the-legacy-of-urban-renewal.html. Robin Pogrebin, “Edmund Bacon, 95, Urban Planner of Philadelphia, Dies,” New York Times, October 18, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/arts/design/edmund-bacon-95-urban-planner-of-philadelphia-dies.html.

  13. 13.

    Pierznik, “Father of Modern Philadelphia.” National Building Museum, “Father of Modern Philadelphia.” Pogrebin, “Edmund Bacon.”

  14. 14.

    Gratz, “Planners.” Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 19–20.

  15. 15.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 19–20.

  16. 16.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 27. Jane Jacobs, “Downtown Is for People,” Fortune, 1958; reprinted by Nin-Hai Tseng, Fortune Magazine, September 18, 2011, http://fortune.com/2011/09/18/downtown-is-for-people-fortune-classic-1958/.

  17. 17.

    Jacobs, “Downtown Is for People.”

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Ibid. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 28.

  20. 20.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 63–65.

  21. 21.

    Ibid. Chris Pomorski, “Power Couple: The Feud between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses Becomes Operatic,” New York Observer, May 29, 2015, http://observer.com/2015/05/power-couple-the-feud-between-jane-jacobs-and-robert-moses-becomes-operatic/.

  22. 22.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 80–87. Robert Fishman, “Revolt of the Urbs: Robert Moses and His Critics,” in Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, ed. Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/rodberg15/files/2015/01/Robert-Fishman-Revolt-of-the-Urbs.pdf. Pomorski, “Power Couple.”

  23. 23.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 99–115.

  24. 24.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 153–57, 177.

  25. 25.

    Jacobs, Death and Life, 12–13. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 91.

  26. 26.

    Jacobs, Death and Life, 34, 37, 448.

  27. 27.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 95–96.

  28. 28.

    Jacobs, Death and Life, 90–91, 99, 140, 144, 150–51.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 187–88.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 188.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 189, 191, 193.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 338, 343, 357, 384.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 198–99.

  34. 34.

    Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 121–25.

  35. 35.

    Lloyd Rodwin, “Neighbors Are Needed,” New York Times, November 5, 1961, https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/17/reviews/jacobs.html. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 129.

  36. 36.

    Hilary Ballon, New York’s Pennsylvania Stations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 97–100.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 101. Flint, Wrestling with Moses, 130–31. David W. Dunlap, “50 Years Ago, Sharply Dressed Protesters Stood Up for a Train Station They Revered,” New York Times, July 31, 2012, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/50-years-ago-sharply-dressed-protesters-stood-up-for-a-train-station-they-revered/.

  38. 38.

    Ada Louise Huxtable, “Farewell to Penn Station,” New York Times, October 30, 1963, https://nycarchitectureandurbanism.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/huxtable-farewell-to-penn-station-1963.pdf. Ballon, New York’s Pennsylvania Stations, 102.

  39. 39.

    Isaac Kremer, “The NHPA at 50: The Williamsburg Conference and With Heritage So Rich,” Place Promotion, June 21, 2013, http://placepromotion.blogspot.com/2013/06/nhpa50-williamsburg-conference-and-with.html.

  40. 40.

    New York City Landmarks Commission, “What Happened in 1965?,” http://www.nyclandmarks50.org/history_and_education.html.

  41. 41.

    Kremer, “The NHPA at 50.”

  42. 42.

    Special Committee on Historic Preservation, With Heritage So Rich (New York: Random House, 1966), 17–20.

  43. 43.

    Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, “National Historic Preservation Act,” 1966, http://www.achp.gov/NHPA.pdf. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, “Section 106 Regulations Summary,” http://www.achp.gov/106summary.html/. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, “Section 106 Success Stories,” http://www.achp.gov/sec106_successes.html. Adam Jones, “Transportation Legislation Threatens Section 4(f),” Preservation Leadership Forum, October 27, 2015, http://forum.savingplaces.org/blogs/forum-online/2015/10/27/transportation-legislation-threatens-section-4f. Stephanie Meeks, “The DRIVE Act Throws History Out the Window,” Hill, July 29, 2015, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/249489-the-drive-act-throws-history-out-the-window.

  44. 44.

    Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built (New York: Penguin, 1994), 88–89.

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Meeks, S., Murphy, K.C. (2016). Downtown Is for People: Competing Visions of the Ideal American City. In: The Past and Future City. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-709-4_2

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