A FILM BY MATT TYRNAUER
USA - 92 MINUTES - 2016 - COLOUR - B&W - ENGLISH
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, is a film about cities through the lens of Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
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 though the lens of one of its greatest champions.
5 Stars! "excellent"
- NOW Magazine
"A documentary that should be seen by anyone interested in the future of cities"
- Georgia Straight
"gorgeous, tightly written and entertaining"
- Globe and Mail
"Jacobs and Moses are no longer with us, but their urgent points of view live on."
- National Post
"Anyone interested in the way cities work should hop the TTC and go to see this."
- Toronto Star
"Anyone interested in the way cities work should go to see this."
- The Weekly News
" polished primer on one of the greatest civic battles in American history"
- The Gate
"When the famed observer of cities took on the planning establishment, it was a street fight for the ages — one captured in a timely documentary."
- The Tyee
"an engaging look at the mid-century civic activism that shaped Jacobs' influence as a 20th-century thinker."
- Urban Toronto