Can you imagine a motorway ploughing through Manhattan? And that SoHo doesn’t exist? This is easily how things might have ended up, had the author and activist Jane Jacobs not fought for her beloved hometown of New York. In the 1950s and 60s, when the property magnate Robert Moses was exerting his powerful influence, Jacobs stood up against a male- and finance-dominated construction industry, which was obsessed with modern, monumental master plans. Both as an activist and as the author of the architecture classic ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’, Jacobs was a true pioneer who was so far ahead of her time that her radical – and in fact deeply humanistic – ideas have only just started to enjoy a breakthrough in architectural mainstream. ‘Citizen Jane’ is thus not only a deeply intriguing story about a courageous woman’s fight for her city. It is also a professionally serious and still relevant masterpiece about architecture, urbanism and the good (city) life. (CPH:DOX)
