Sat 7/1 @ 9:10PM
Sun 7/2 @ 4:15PM
Jane Jacobs was one of the 20th century’s most important activists on behalf of urban dwellers living in poverty. Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities advocated for cities to provide for residents of all socio-economic classes. She became widely known when she opposed city planners in New York whose “urban renewal” efforts pushed out the poor in favor of the wealthy, destroying communities in the process, a battle sadly lost in more recent years following her death in 2006. She was an early advocate of the now-trendy idea of what’s been dubbed “mixed-use” neighborhoods.
The 2016 documentary Citizen Jane: Battle for the City details her ideas and her battles, which took her head-to-head with powerful urban planner Robert Moses in New York who favored highways over people and public transit. Her advocacy led to the cancellation of an expressway that would have obliterated much of SoHo and Little Italy. The movie screens at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. Admission is $10.