The Middle Ground Between Moses and Jacobs

24 August 2009 - 9:00am

This article from Triple Canopy looks at the unrealized urban planning ideas of former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, which were somewhere in between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.

"In place of Moses’s racially partitioned New York, Lindsay had promised a new city that would be integrated and equal, dense in population and activity, accommodating to people as well as to automobiles.

Every citizen would be entitled to every patch of public land, and every new housing project, park, and highway would be considered as part of a comprehensive renewal plan. Freeways would tunnel under enormous new housing towers, which would in turn punctuate the famous skyline while still abetting traditional street life. It was an urban vision at once radically futuristic and reverent of the dynamism of New York’s past. And it was time, Lindsay felt, that old man Moses made way for it."

Source: Triple Canopy, August 21, 2009
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Fainstein's conceptualization of the just city requires the incorporation of three principles (democracy, diversity, and equity) into the development and evaluation of public policy at the metropolitan level.