To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. The activist, writer, and mother of three grew so fond of her bustling community that it became a touchstone for her landmark book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New Yorks most monumental development projects, saw things differently: neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village were badly in need of urban renewal. Notorious for exacting enormous human costs, Mosess plans had never before been haltednot by governors, mayors, or FDR himself, and certainly not by a housewife from Scranton.
