Editing Jane Jacobs (section)

=== Struggle for Greenwich Village ===
During the 1950s and 1960s, her home neighborhood of [[Greenwich Village]] was being transformed by city and state efforts to build housing (see, for example, Jacobs's 1961 fight to build the [[West Village Houses]] in lieu of large apartment houses), private developers, the expansion of [[New York University]], and by the [[urban renewal]] plans of [[Robert Moses]]. Moses' plan, funded as "slum clearance" by Title I of the [[Housing Act of 1949]], also called for several blocks to be razed and replaced with upscale high-rises. The plan forced 132 families out of their homes and displaced 1,000 small businesses{{snd}}the result was [[Washington Square Village]].{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|pp=50–52}}[[File:Washington Square Park 02.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Jacobs fought to prevent [[Washington Square Park]], pictured, from being demolished for a highway]]
As part of his efforts to revitalize the area, Moses had proposed the extension of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park in 1935. In the face of community opposition, Moses had shelved the project, but revived the idea in the 1950s. Moses argued that the Fifth Avenue extension would improve the flow of traffic through the neighborhood and provide access to the planned [[Lower Manhattan Expressway]] (LOMEX), which would connect the [[Manhattan Bridge]] and [[Williamsburg Bridge]] with the [[Holland Tunnel]].{{sfn|Flint|2009|p=65}}

In response, local activist Shirley Hayes created the "Committee to Save Washington Square Park", a coalition of dozens of local neighborhood groups that opposed the roadway extension. [[I. M. Rubinow|Raymond S. Rubinow]] eventually took over the organization, changing its name to the "Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square to Traffic". Jacob—recruited to the cause by Gerard La Mountain, a local [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] priest whose church was in the path of the planned LOMEX route—had joined the committee under Hayes, but she took a more prominent role under Rubinow, reaching out to media outlets such as ''[[The Village Voice]]'', which provided more sympathetic coverage than ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rorke |first=Robert |date=26 September 2016 |title=Meet the woman who took on Robert Moses and saved lower Manhattan |url=https://nypost.com/2016/09/26/meet-the-woman-who-saved-lower-manhattan/ |access-date=9 December 2023 |language=en-US}}</ref>{{sfn|Flint|2009|pp=83–84}} The committee gained the support of [[Margaret Mead]], [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], [[Lewis Mumford]], [[Charles Abrams]], and [[William H. Whyte]], as well as [[Carmine De Sapio]], a Greenwich Village resident and influential Democratic leader. De Sapio's involvement proved decisive.{{sfn|Flint|2009|p=86}} On 25 June 1958, the city closed Washington Square Park to traffic, and the joint committee held a ribbon tying (not cutting) ceremony.{{sfn|Flint|2009|p=85}}

Plans for LOMEX expressway continued despite growing community opposition in areas such as Little Italy. In the 1960s, Jacobs chaired the [[Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway]]. ''The New York Times'' was sympathetic to Moses, while ''The Village Voice'' covered community rallies and advocated against the expressway.{{sfn|Flint|2009|pp=83–84}} Jacobs continued to fight the expressway when plans resurfaced in 1962, 1965, and 1968, and she became a local hero for her opposition to the project.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|p=117}} She was arrested by a plainclothes police officer on 10 April 1968, at a public hearing during which the crowd had charged the stage and destroyed the stenographer's notes.{{sfn|Flint|2009|p=xiv}} She was accused of inciting a riot, criminal mischief, and obstructing public administration. After months of trials conducted in New York City (to which Jacobs commuted from Toronto), her charge was reduced to disorderly conduct.<ref name="DMartin" /><ref>{{cite news|first=Clark|last=Whelton|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-eVLAAAAIBAJ&dq=jane%20jacobs%20rioting&pg=5330%2C4292333|title=Won't you come home, Jane Jacobs?|newspaper=The Village Voice|date=6 July 1974|pages=1, 24}}</ref>

''[[New York: A Documentary Film]]'' devoted an hour of the eight-part, seventeen-and-a-half-hour series to the battle between Moses and Jacobs.<ref>''American Experience: New York''. Disc 7; [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/peopleevents/e_ideal.html People & Events: The Planning Debate in New York, 1955–1975] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091208094245/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/peopleevents/e_ideal.html |date=8 December 2009 }}, PBS film description.</ref> [[Robert Caro]]'s biography of Moses, ''[[The Power Broker]]'', gives only passing mention to this event, however, despite Jacobs's strong influence on Caro.<ref>Caro, Robert. [http://www.rockfound.org/efforts/jacobs/090808caro_transcript.pdf Remarks at the presentation of the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090521035033/http://www.rockfound.org/efforts/jacobs/090808caro_transcript.pdf |date=21 May 2009 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Fernandez | first=Manny | url=https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/caro-speaks-to-the-spirit-of-jane-jacobs/ | title=Caro Speaks to the Spirit of Jane Jacobs | work=[[The New York Times]] | date=9 September 2008 | access-date=2 April 2020}}</ref> In 2017, Caro told an interviewer about the difficulty in cutting more than 300,000 words from his initial manuscript: "The section that I wrote on Jane Jacobs disappeared. To this day, when someone says: 'There's hardly a mention of Jane Jacobs,' I think, 'But I wrote a lot about her.' Every time I'm asked about that, I have this sick feeling."<ref>{{cite interview | url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/01/16/studies-in-power-an-interview-with-robert-caro/ | title='Studies in Power': An Interview with Robert Caro | first=Robert | last=Caro | interviewer=[[Claudia Dreifus]] | date=16 January 2018 | work=[[The New York Review of Books]] | access-date=2 April 2020}}</ref>