Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses

"For those of us who care about cities and why they flourish or fade, the accepted wisdom boils down to this: Robert Moses bad, Jane Jacobs good.

Moses lives in urban lore as the ruthless New York bureaucrat who forced highways through neighborhoods with no regard for real lives in the way. Jacobs is his antithesis, the Greenwich Village everywoman who enshrined the virtues of messy vitality in her still-potent "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

Now there's a book that shows how these mythic characters shaped each other's work and reputations - a volume that leaves me wishing there was some way today to combine the best traits of both."