The current political climate in the United States, wherein government officials with an authoritarian bent attempt to implement “reforms” in the face of popular resistance and disapproval, bears a strong resemblance to the story of Robert Moses's efforts to reconfigure housing and transit systems in New York City in the 1950s–60s and the grassroots opposition to them led by Jane Jacobs. The saltiness of the language with which some might denigrate Donald Trump's presidential administration echoes, no doubt, the same sort of diction one could use to describe Moses, the de facto director of all municipal construction and associated programs of urban renewal in New York City for much of the two decades after World War II. Meanwhile, the now-familiar mantra “Nevertheless, she persisted” could be applied retroactively to Jacobs, whose unflagging determination united her neighbors in Greenwich Village. In the end, Jacobs and her cohort scuttled Moses's plans for...
University of California Press