Event Description
On Thursday, April 18, join the Westphal College for the screening of 'Citizen Jane', a 2017 documentary about writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs and her fight to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s. Following the film will be a Q&A will director Matt Tyrnauer. This event is free and open to the public.
In 1960 Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities. Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city. This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today through the lens of one of its greatest champions.
April 18, 2019 // URBN Annex Screening Room // 7:00PM |
