There's something funny about architectural theory. It takes the building—one of the heaviest and most solid artifacts of human production—and evacuates it of any relation to the physical world.
In counterpoint to last February’s three-venue series of Robert Moses retrospectives, New York City’s design mavens are now revisiting Jane Jacobs, whose writings about urban life came to symbolize the opposite of Moses’ own approach to planning cities. Manhattan’s Municipal Art Society (MAS) is using the late community organizer and theorist as the touchstone for an inquiry into New York City’s current character. Jacobs made her name in the early 1960s by helping organize a grassroots campaign to protect historic buildings and neighborhoods from destruction—most notably Greenwich Village, which lay in the path of an expressway Moses sought to build.
