“Citizen Jane, Battle for the City” film is about the city development. The modern history of New York in urbanism.It shows Jane Jacobs’ efforts against Robert Moses projects. The main role in this history is Robert Moses. He was not an actor but many kind of changes that you see now in the city of New York is because of him. Towers, parks and highways are the legacy of his thoughts and actions. As the film insisted, Moses is approaching the regeneration of the city like a construction project. He and his fellows misinterpreted the Le Corbusier concept for developing city in modern ages. The core of their belief was that the future of the cities are in the hands of automobile and every design should be fit to this idea. And after some years there were a lot of big towers and express ways in the city.

Moses personally wants to remove the slum areas and change them to modern housing projects. He thought that by tall building and wide streets, people would have more safety and space for life. After the end of this projects, nothing happened in these tall building, people had less security than before and social activity reduced because of assigning the best places of the city to cars.

On the other side, Jane Jacobs was a journalist who has a great impact on imagination about the modernism. She believed that cities are living things. They are complex and as she says “systems of order” and she compare them with other ecosystems like jungles and rivers. You cannot create a jungle by planting some trees or building a river by building a water canal. It takes time people transform and change cities for better living and fit their needs. If anybody destroy old buildings and construct new towers, is not able to form a new community. Communities has been shaped in years by people interacting and connecting. Sidewalks are necessary for streets and people contact each other through streets and specially sidewalks.

Jane Jacobs’ story also is about how to act in city like a citizen and react to plans and ideas that want to destroy communities and neighborhoods. She had a good strategy to fight against simple assumptions about city planning and development and against car making companies and politicians who support them and developers. She knew how to change decisions by bringing people to act as citizens and real stakeholders of the city.