The development of cities has historically been a slow-moving process. In the everchanging urban landscape that faces the pushes and pulls of a variety of social, economic, and financial factors, it’s been hard to pinpoint just one main reason over another why each city has evolved over time into the way that we experience it today. And as designers and planners speculate about what the future of our cities should be, sometimes the reason that our cities look and operate in the way that they do has come down to a few famous battles between individuals with competing schools of thought.
The cities we walk down, the parks we lounge in, the educational campuses we visit, and even the streets we drive on, are by no accident. Their design and reasoning are derived from a multitude of principles that have been carefully vetted by people whose goal is to ensure that cities are inhabitable for all. Sometimes, those people are met with opposition, and dedicate their lives to ensuring that their points of view triumph, and leave lasting impacts for centuries. One of those famous battles between urban idealists was between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses and their vision for the future of New York City.
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