All language subtitles for Citizen.Jane.Battle.For.The.City.2016.DVDRip.x264-RedBlade

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[indistinct chatter]

[typewriter clacking]

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Cities are, in many ways,
the greatest invention

that human beings
have brought to the world.

Cities have been expanding

and urbanization has been
expanding on the globe

in an exponential fashion.

Most extraordinarily,
we are urbanizing people

on the planet, at maybe

one and a half
million people every week

In less than 2 months

there'll be the equivalent
to another Los Angeles

metropolitan area
on this planet.

This scale and speed
of urbanization

has never, ever happened
in human history.

This is the first time.

When you look at
what is being built in cities

you have endless, endless

row after row
of homogenizing towers.

And you see more
and more highways.

At this moment, you're
going to shape the cities

for generations to come.

People need to realize
this is an opportunity

which will never come again.

There are a couple of ways
of approaching

the design of cities.

The question is always
who decides..

...what the physical form
will be..

...how the city
is going to function

and who is going
to live in the city.

In order to understand
what's happening today..

...we need to think
about 2 great figures

in the middle
of the 20th century

who embodied the struggle
for the city.

The legendary power broker
Robert Moses

represented the authority
of the great man

who was gonna come into the
city with his carving knife

and clear away
the cancerous tissue..

[Crash]

...and replace it
with the shiny implements

of modernist planning.

Uh, you have to move
a lot of people out of the way

of a big housing, uh, project

or, uh,
slum clearance project.

A lot of 'em
are not going to like it.

Many of them are misinformed.

In opposition
to the homogenizing clarity

of Moses was Jane Jacobs.

I have very little faith, uh

i -- in, in even
the kind of person

who, uh, prefers
to take a large overall

uh, view of things.

Jacobs was an outsider.

She believed the city
is not about buildings.

The city is about people.

It is about public spaces
and the street

and she stood up for that.

She evolved both a theory

of what made a good
and just city

and a theory of opposition

to the kind of planning practice
that Moses represented.

There's a prudishness,
a fear of life

a wish to direct things from some uncontaminated refuge

that is part and parcel
of their bad plan.

They were famously at odds
with each other.

It really did become a war
between opposing forces.

Today we're still fighting
these battles

across the world.

When we look across the
spectrum of all the problems

generated by urbanization

there is the extraordinary
realization that, my gosh

you know, these have been
problems that have been around

for the last 100 years
in cities.

New York, of course

is the greatest example
of that.

In the 1930s

New York was the world's
greatest city, you know?

A very special place.

Just the exuberance
of metropolitan life

in the early 20th century.

That's, you know,
the -- the great age

of the first
real great skyscrapers.

You know,
the Empire State Building

is the very climax of that.

But then,
it all kind of crashes with The Depression.

Through the entire decade
of the '30s

it's just one problem
after another.

Down at street level

was this degraded environment.

Slums and dirt
and, and pollution

that did not fit
with the glorious spires

of the new skyscraper city.

The city was overcrowded

harsh, dirty, dangerous

and infested with disease.

Jacob Riis' famous book

"How The Other Half Live"

brought a lot of attention
to this.

The idea was, we will solve
the city's problem

by cleaning it up.

Now this is a unfortunate
period for the city.

We've done an immense amount
to cure these diseases

and we have much more to do.

Robert Moses
started to work in an era

where we had a great many people

living in truly
horrible conditions.

He began his professional life

in opposition
to those conditions.

Moses emerged out
of the Progressive Movement

early in the 20th century
in New York.

The progressives were eager
to improve the city.

His early work
in developing public parks

and public beaches
was about making life better

for people who were not rich.

Now if we don't
clean out these slums

the central areas
are going to rot.

And it's all nonsense to say
that the problem can be solved

by rehabilitating and fixing up Old Law Tenements.

It can't be done.

That problem
we've got to face.

Just about every progressive
believed

that the way to solve
the city's problems

was to wipe the slate clean,
start all over again.

We didn't understand
how high the price was

how we were giving up
so many things

that were so very important
until Jane Jacobs came along.

Jane always would see

in a city opportunities

that existed there.

She observed
hints of regeneration

hints of creativity

hints of resourcefulness.

It was this life spring

of people coming
to make their way.

I think that must have shaped
her approach to the city.

I just loved
coming to New York.

It was inexhaustible.

Just to walk around
its streets and wonder at it.

So many streets different.

So many neighborhoods different.

Uh, so much going on.

She lived
in Greenwich Village

and just viscerally felt

the pulse of the city

and was
extraordinarily intuitive.

Was extremely observant.

New York was a place
where you don't have to be

big and important and rich

or have a great plot of land

or a great development scheme

or something like that
to do something.

And maybe
even do something new

and do something interesting.

A place that has scope
for all kinds of people.

What she saw
was the soul of New York

and what it meant to be a city

and a city meaning
a community of people.

After the war,
the most sensational thing

that came was the full flowering
of this vision

of the expressway tower city.

This generation of idealistic
city planners comes along

and they're infected with the modernist purity idea.

And they certainly have
the tools at their disposal

to sweep away
large tracts of land.

We recognize the problems
that your community faces

and we know that you share them

with hundreds of cities
everywhere.

Now what's involved in making
your city a better place?

Well, things like housing

industrial development

better streets and highways.

Improving all these things
adds up to a better city.

I'm sure that you will see
the exciting opportunity

that exists for your city
to become better.

There was this emerging idea
that crowded urban areas

where people were kind of
hanging out on the street

on their stoops, uh, where
there was a lot of poverty

that the way
to deal with that problem

was to effectively
get rid of the streets.

Was effectively to eliminate
that sidewalk culture.

And build projects that would
make it impossible really

for people to kind of cluster
in public in that way.

The idea of urban renewal
was that

places that were blighted

were a cancer on the city

and therefore, we're gonna
cut out the cancer.

The planners conceiving
these urban renewal projects

are doing this from that

God-like vantage point
in the sky.

To be able to look down

and you're able to imagine
massive transformations.

They thought
that applying the logic

of The Machine Age
was gonna do that.

The problem had to be solved
by some supervisor

noticing where the slums were,
noticing where the traffic was

and going in and bulldozing..

...and building
grand projects.

Well, we got out
a brochure just now

telling when everybody
has to move.

Robert Moses was
the great embodiment of this.

I don't honestly believe that

considering the large numbers of people we've had to move out

of the way of public housing
and other public improvements

I don't believe
that we've done

any very substantial
amount of harm.

There must be people
who are discommoded

inconvenienced
or call it what you will

on the old theory,
that you can't make an omelet

without breaking some eggs.

After the Second World War

Robert Moses
began to amass power.

He was the august
parks commissioner

in the city of New York.

And he got power
to build parkways.

He was appointed the city's
construction coordinator.

He built
thousands of apartments.

He became urban renewal czar

the head of the mayor's
committee on slum clearance.

By the time
that Moses was running

the Urban Renewal Program

we had torn down

literally thousands
of tenement buildings

in cities like New York
and Chicago.

You know, there's the,
the pre-war Moses

and the post-war Moses.

The pre-war Moses
was mostly an angel.

Post-war Moses
was increasingly problematic.

For nearly half a century

this man has pushed people
around New York.

Almost anybody
who is anybody has cursed him

fought him, knuckled
under to him and admired him.

The list of his adversaries
include Franklin Roosevelt

Fanny Hurst, Elmer Davis
who once compared him

to Hitler, Walter O'Malley

and hundreds
of thousands of landowners

who thought
their property was sacred.

Absolute power
corrupts absolutely

and Robert Moses
was absolutely powerful.

So he had amassed,
um, not simply

an incredible amount of power

but had insulated himself

from oversight
by political authorities

and by the broader public.

Don't forget that
it's one thing to buy a park

or a great big chunk of land
from one owner.

It's quite another thing
to get a right-of-way

where hundreds and even
thousands of people own it.

You theoretically and,
according to some of the, uh

goo-goos
and uplift organizations

we ought to negotiate with every
individual until he's happy.

Can you imagine
when you'd build anything

under those conditions?

Moses along
with all of the people

that were involved
in the Urban Renewal Program

had an agreed-upon agenda.

People needed adequate housing

adequate recreation facilities

and the motorcar
was coming to America

and it needed to be
accommodated on a large scale.

That was the agenda.

Moses became one polar view
of what you could do.

Until, all of a sudden,
there was an alternative.

Jane Jacobs has in

"The Death and Life
of Great American Cities"

written a book that advances
with the controlled

and implacable power
of a bulldozer

against modern orthodox city
planning and rebuilding.

I first began
to look into city planning

and, and housing

and it was unbelievably awful.

Uh, insane.

When "Death And Life"
comes out in the '60s

it's a clarion call.

It's Martin Luther
nailing those 95 theses

to the, to the cathedral door.

The book is really
the first cogent

accessible articulation
of a whole set of ideas

that questions the mainstream
thinking about our cities.

She is constantly probing.

By that example, she's saying

"You, reader, you have
the ability to question."

"Look what we have built.

"Low-income projects
that become

"worse centers of delinquency

"vandalism and general
social hopelessness

"than the slums they were
supposed to replace.

"Middle-income
housing projects

"which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation..

"...sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life.

"Luxury housing projects
that mitigate their inanity

"or try to
with a vapid vulgarity.

"Cultural centers
that are unable to support

"a good bookstore.

"Civic centers that are
avoided by everyone but bums

"who have fewer choices of
loitering place than others.

"Expressways that
eviscerate great cities.

"This is not
the rebuilding of cities.

This is the sacking
of cities."

She was questioning orthodoxy

and in essence saying
the emperor has no clothes..

...at a time
when women were not welcomed

in those kinds
of environments.

If you wanna see what kind
of a city can flourish

you need to look at the cities
where it's happening.

There must be a lot
of diversity

continually building up,
diversity of kinds of work..

...diversity
of kinds of people.

She revealed the way
to create better cities

is by working with the people
who live there

and the fabric that existed.

The traditional fabric
that people inhabited.

There have to be
areas of the city

which people use a lot,
walking on the streets

and use at all times of day.

Jane understood neighborhoods
need lots of connections.

Short blocks, lots of turns

allowing different
kinds of interaction.

Neighborhoods need a mix
of buildings, old and new.

They need diverse uses, 24/7,
so that they're safer.

Constant connection with,
uh, neighborhoods around

so that you're not isolated.

You need public spaces
that are accessible to people.

It's all a great network
in the city.

It's all related.

She observed these early,
early qualities at a time

when housing was being built

in completely
opposite direction.

They were
isolating communities.

They were creating
dead-end streets.

They were separating work uses

and recreation
and residential uses.

She was explaining
how life worked.

Before "Death And Life,"
she was a journalist.

She was a very savvy observer
of human behavior

of places, of cities.

Jacobs started writing
about the city

when she was 18 years old.

She was a secretary
for a candy company.

She was determined
to write on the side.

She did what any good
enterprising writer would do.

She got freelance jobs.

Her curiosity
was so remarkable.

She writes about specific

economic districts
in the city.

She does the Jewelry District

she does the Fur District,
she does the Flower District

and she develops a voice.

And where does
she sell them to?

"Vogue" magazine.

She was writing pieces

about what she was observing
and seeing in the city.

"The best way
to plan for Downtown

"is to see
how people use it today.

"To look for its strengths

"and to exploit
and reinforce them.

"There is no logic that can
be superimposed on the city.

"People make it.

"And it is to them,
not buildings

that we must fit our plans."

"Q Magazine" accepted
one of her stories

about manhole covers.

She discovered that they had
all kinds of interesting

uh, patterns on them,
interesting lettering.

How many female journalists

were writing
about manhole covers?

Nobody. But she was.

She wanted to figure out how
the sewer system was working.

She's curious.
She's got a really good craft.

She knows how to write.

And she finds herself
in a staff job

with "Architectural Forum."

Mrs. Jacobs,
an associate editor

of the magazine
"Architectural Forum"

has been a New Yorker
for 27 years

and loves it,
Mrs. Jane Jacobs.

[Applause]

Thank you very much,
Mr. Dolbier.

One fine day,
"Architectural Forum" put me on an assignment

about some urban renewal
projects that were being done.

In Philadelphia,
as a matter of fact.

We have found, in our work
in rebuilding Philadelphia

that a central design idea,
well-developed

and clearly-expressed,
can of itself

become a major creative force

and can make more meaningful

the work of individual
architects

in various parts of an area.

I found out
what they had in mind

and what they were
planning to do

and how it was going to look

according to the drawings

and what great things
it was going to accomplish.

I came back and wrote

enthusiastic articles
about this.

All was well,
I was in very cozy

with the planners
and the project builders.

Anyhow, time passed

and some of these things
were actually built.

Society Hill is residential.

The oldest part of the city,
it is the site

of an intensive
restoration project.

Houses, many pre-dating
the American Revolution

slowly had grown dilapidated

and had been converted
to other uses.

In addition,
there was room for new

dramatically contemporary
apartment towers.

Society Hill emerges

as a combination
of ancient and modern.

But they didn't work at all
the way they should've worked.

The city around them
didn't react the way

uh, theoretically
the city around them

should have reacted.

She is the
hyper-sensitive antennae

you know, that's picking up
something here

that no one else is seeing.

Why did stores that looked
very cheerful and posed

to, uh, be doing a great
booming business in the plans

actually go empty
or languish?

Well, I would bring
these questions up

with the people
who had been responsible

for the, uh, planning
of these places.

And I got quite
a lot of alibis

boiling down to,
uh, "People are stupid.

They don't do
what they're supposed to do."

And this was a great shock
to me.

Never mind highfalutin
theories and so forth.

What are we looking at?
What are we seeing?

Do you wanna trust some theory

that somebody figured out sitting in an office somewhere?

Or do you wanna trust
what you actually see

out there with your own eyes?

Maybe the experts
didn't really know

as much as they
pretended to know.

About this time, a gentleman
came into the office

of the "Architectural Forum."

He was very much worried
about East Harlem.

About 300 million dollars

uh, worth
of city rebuilding money

had been put to work.

He could see
that their problems

were growing greater than they had ever been in the past.

She goes up to Harlem
and she was taken around

by William Kirk
of the Union Settlement House.

And he's showing her
all the things

that are being lost
in this community

when it's being demolished.

He would walk me
around East Harlem.

We would stop in at stores

stop in at housing projects.

I began to see the..

Just out of the accumulation
of all of this

I was beginning to understand
how things worked.

Many little details
of cause and effect.

She describes it
as the very beginning.

The sort of moment
when the light bulb

kind of went off in her head.

What I was seeing,
in fact, was, uh

what makes the very intricate
order of the city.

This has to do with a quality

that's called
rather vaguely urbanism.

Cities are extremely
physical places.

It's not an inert mass.

It's enterprises and people

reacting in certain ways
to each other

and mutually supporting
each other.

And wherever
it worked properly

there seemed to be
an awful lot of diversity.

Many different kinds
of enterprises

many different kinds
of people

mutually supporting
and supplementing each other.

Jane Jacobs is thinking about
how does a neighborhood work?

How does a street work?

What function
does a sidewalk play?

But what she's really after
is a new theory

of how cities function.

"In Death And Life
Of Great American Cities"

she's asking what is
the problem of a city?

She argues,
"A city is a problem

of organized complexity."

Looks on the surface

like it's complex
and disorderly..

...but in fact, there's
an underlying structure.

Looks like chaos, but in fact,
there's a balance.

There's a productive mix

of different functions
and organisms.

She draws
on ecological metaphors

biological metaphors

to suggest how
it's really an ecosystem.

She wrote..

"To see complex systems
of functional order

"as order and not as chaos

takes understanding.

"The leaves dropping
from the trees in the autumn

"the interior
of an airplane engine..

"...the entrails
of a dissected rabbit..

"...the city desk
of a newspaper..

"All appear to be chaos

"if they are seen
without comprehension.

"Once they are seen
as systems of order

they actually look different."

Jacobs understood
when cities really work

they're phenomena that come
from the bottom up.

So a great neighborhood
is what happens

when thousands
of different actors..

...and that's the shopkeepers,
the bar owners

the people walking the streets

they spontaneously
come together

in, in an uncoordinated
but meaningful way

to create the kind of flavor
and personality

of a distinct neighborhood.

That's not planned.

That's much more a question
of organized complexity.

Jane Jacobs understood that
living cities are not pretty.

They're messy, uh, chaotic

dense with people
interacting together.

Dead cities are beautiful
in a certain sense

because they tend
to look predictable.

There aren't very many people.

If you can understand a city,
then that city is dead.

Living cities are congested.

They're frustrating.

And at the same time, that's
where your dreams come true.

Planners, they don't see any
of the wondrous human qualities

that Jacobs is seeing.

The very forms of urbanism
that she wrote about

the urban renewalists
sought to destroy.

What would you do for Harlem?

- The slum corner of Harlem.
- Yes.

I'd take that and all
the other similar slums.

I'd tear 'em all out,
every bit of 'em.

It's a cancerous thing

and you've just got
to wipe them out.

I say that you have
a cancerous growth there

that has to be carved out.

Alright, you've carved it out

and now you've replaced
it with something new.

Yes, that's right.

With something that's decent

something that involves
light and air

and, uh, new schools
and playgrounds and parks.

And I'd say that's a hell
of a big contribution

and certainly
all the contribution

that I would be able to make

with all the people
I can persuade to make it.

Instead of following
the natural way

that people use space

city planning
in this post-war era

and modern architecture
created

this abstract vision
of what it should be.

Concentrated on the utopian
and the ideal.

In the 1920s,
you get the rise

of this curious,
mystical figure

um, out of Switzerland

uh, who calls himself
Le Corbusier.

He's done some architecture
and he's bethinking himself

not only an architect,
but a great urban visionary.

The real gestation
of his ideas

about modernist urbanism

that came as a result of riding in an airplane over Paris.

Seeing the city
from up in the air

looking down God-like
on this diorama

versus considering and knowing
the city from the streets.

Corb was enraptured
by the airplane.

He writes that the airplane
indicts the mess

we've made of our cities.

Before the wheels
hit the tarmac

he's concluded that we need
to sweep all this away

and rebuild our cities.

Le Corbusier envisioned
tearing down

huge sections of Paris..

...and replacing it with slabs

modern slabs,
cruciform buildings.

He proposed superhighways

that went through
green open space.

And they were going
to terminate in superblocks.

And the superblocks
had high-rise buildings

and the high-rise buildings

were so that people
could have light and air

and they could get out
of the slums.

He was thoroughly
of the opinion

that if you had,
uh, good architecture

the lives of people
would be improved

and that architecture
would improve people

and people would improve
architecture

until perfectibility
would descend on us

like The Holy Ghost
and we'd be happy forever after.

Corb did this plan
and made his models

and, uh, it excited
a lot of people.

But in France,
they weren't so excited.

The idea of the Ville Radieuse
and the tower in a park

ended up, uh, moving to America

just like the rest
of modernism did.

To help us get a glimpse
into the future

of this unfinished world
of ours

there has been created
for the New York World's Fair

a thought-provoking exhibit

of the developments
ahead of us.

In 1939, General Motors
had an exhibition.

The Futurama.

It showed superhighways.

And everybody in America
wanted this.

Here is an American city
replanned

around a highly-developed
modern traffic system.

Rebuilt and replanned.

Residential, commercial
and industrial areas

all have been separated

for greater efficiency
and greater convenience.

The '39 World's Fair
in New York

was a Corbusier event.

It celebrated that style.

And so we see some suggestion

of the things to come.

A world with a future

in which all of us
are tremendously interested

because that is where
we are going to spend

the rest of our lives.

In a future
which can be whatever

we propose to make it.

Modernism moved
into the mainstream

of both American
commercial architecture

and urban renewal.

The public housing model that
we picked in the United States

was a misinterpretation
of Le Corbusier.

The towers in his 1923 plan

were for offices,
and then around the towers

were low 7 story buildings
with generous balconies.

He never called for people

living in high-rise towers.

It was one
of those odd moments

where a set
of intellectual ideas

could be corrupted
very quickly and easily

into something
cheap and commercial.

The simplest formula to make
quick money is modernism.

And it was very cheap,
very quick to produce

and could suddenly enable

huge amounts of building
to happen very quickly.

And Robert Moses
totally understood that.

The one thing
missing completely

from that vision is streets.

And the idea that a street is
something you actually walk on

and a street is a place
where things happen.

Jane Jacobs saw that at a time

when everybody else
was thinking the sidewalk

was a kind of foolish leftover
of another age.

"This is something
everyone already knows.

"A well-used city street
is apt to be a safe street.

"A deserted city street
is apt to be unsafe.

"But how does this work
really?

"There must be eyes
upon the street.

"Eyes belonging to those
we may call

"the natural proprietors
of the street.

"The buildings on a street
equipped to handle strangers

"and to ensure the safety of both residents and strangers

"must be oriented
to the street.

"They cannot turn their backs
or blank sides on it

and leave it blind."

Philosophically,
what she recognized was

safety doesn't come
from armed security guards

or blocking the entrances.

What makes a neighborhood
great is precisely the fact

that there are people
on the street.

"The sidewalk must have users
on it fairly continuously

"both to add to the numbers of effective eyes on the street

"and to induce the people in
the buildings along the street

"to watch the sidewalks
in sufficient numbers.

"Nobody enjoys sitting
on a stoop

"or looking out a window
at an empty street.

"Almost nobody does
such a thing.

"Large numbers of people entertain themselves off and on

by watching street activity."

She went out
and looked at things.

When she said that the doormen
were paid eyes on the street

and that the same thing
could happen

from bars on the street
in West Village

I understood
what she was talking about.

Nobody has to worry
about things

where there are a lot
of people on the street.

Jane Jacobs reverses
the vantage point.

What is it like actually
to live in these places

from street level?

And it's that simple
change of perspective

that lead her away
from the orthodoxy of the time.

Robert Moses had no interest
really in paying attention

to what was there
in neighborhoods.

What was there, he viewed
as simply an obstacle

to what he wanted
to make happen.

People oppose Moses
all the time.

Whether he wanted Lincoln
Center for the performing arts

a bridge across the entrance
to New York Harbor

a parking lot where mothers air their babies in Central Park

a highway down the spine
of Fire Island

or one through the middle
of Washington Square

vehement opposition
was what he expected

and what he got.

Oh, there's opposition
to everything

that's, uh, progressive,
everything that's new.

The opinion of people
who were activists

as we were in the village

were Robert Moses was terrible

and Robert Moses
was destroying the city

and Robert Moses
had to be stopped.

Jane had got involved
in several efforts

to stop Robert Moses from
ripping the city to pieces.

Starting with the, uh,
his attempt

to run Fifth Avenue down
through Washington Square.

The first time
I became aware

of the threat
of what the highways

were doing
and could do to New York

was when along came the plan

to push Fifth Avenue through
Washington Square Park

and down below it
as a continuous street.

They, uh, wanted to have
the Fifth Avenue buses

go through the park

down into West Broadway

and change the name of that

to Fifth Avenue South

so as to make it
more valuable for rents.

And that was
a Robert Moses project.

This wasn't in the abstract
for Jane Jacobs.

This was happening
close to home.

Right in her backyard.

This was where
she brought her kids

in strollers
to play in that park.

It was the campus
for a university.

It was the front yard

for neighborhood kids
growing up.

It was a true reflection
of a diverse neighborhood.

This is The Circle.

On weekdays,
it's a wading pool for village kids.

But on Sundays,
the water is turned off

and the circle becomes
a meeting place

for guitarists,
bongo and banjo players

villagers on a stroll,
folk singers and tourists.

To me and to many others,
we were outraged

about a road going
through Washington Square

and we were going to save
Washington Square Park.

Washington Square
was really Jane Jacobs'

beginning as a civic activist.

All of the activists,
myself included

were involved in trying
to stop that.

The leaders there

included, uh, Jane Jacobs

and Shirley Hayes.

Shirley Hayes and Edith Lyons

uh, were the 2 women

who started the, the fight
against the roadway

in Washington Square Park.

Jane was not deferential
to power.

So she ups the ante on that
Washington Square fight

and says,
"I'm gonna write the mayor."

"I have heard with alarm
and almost with disbelief

"the plans to run a sunken
highway through the center

"of Washington Square.

"My husband and I
are amongst the citizens

"who truly believe in New York

"to the extent
that we have bought a home

"in the heart of the city
and remodeled it

"with a lot of hard work.

"It is very discouraging
to do our best

"to make the city
more habitable

"and then to learn
that the city itself

is thinking up schemes
to make it uninhabitable."

Jane's example
that she set for herself

is an example
for other people to follow.

If a highway is coming through

that's going
to be very destructive

and you know
it's an idiotic thing

you fight that highway.

Protest against stultification
and the status quo

and things that touch you and your neighborhood directly.

I think she was effective

because of the force
of her personality

and the fact that
she was able to mobilize

a lot of people.

And Margaret Meade
and Susan Sontag

and all the various folks
that Jane was involved with

were drawn to the tangibility
of this particular fight.

They get too many critics.

They get too many mud-throwers

too many people who foul
their nest and there we are.

That's our trouble.

Too many people sitting around

calling names like Mumford.

People that,
what do they contribute?

You have any problem
to solve, any difficulty

you'd never call upon them.

Call upon them
for four-letter words.

They don't even have very good
vocabulary in my book.

Robert Moses wasn't used
to anybody saying no to him.

He'd fire off these letters

to people of,
uh, Greenwich Village.

"I realized that
in the process of rebuilding

"south of Washington Square

"there would be
cries of anguish

"from those
who are honestly convinced

"the Sistine Madonna
was painted in the basement

"of one
of the old buildings there

"not presently occupied
by a cabaret or speakeasy.

"That Michelangelo's David
was fashioned

"in a garret
in the same neighborhood.

"And that anyone
who lays hands

"on these sacred landmarks
will be executed

"if he has not already
been struck down

by a bolt from heaven."

They managed to show Moses
as this bully

and they, they got
a lot of important people

on their side,
including Eleanor Roosevelt.

I would feel very strongly

that destroying the Square

by putting a large artery

for traffic through the Square

would harm
not only the Square itself

but the whole neighborhood

and really the city.

I'm not opposed to change.

In fact, I believe in change.

But I think
that good tradition

has to be preserved.

Jacobs was
a brilliant strategist

when it came to civil action.

She had a real sense
for the photo op.

In Washington Square Park

she arranged for her daughter
and another girl

to conduct
a ribbon-tying ceremony.

This, of course,
was the opposite of

the ribbon cutting ceremony

the politicians loved to,
uh, celebrate

with public works.

It was at one of the hearings

where Moses was foolish enough
to say that

nobody's against us
except a bunch of mothers.

How could he be so tactless?

Only if you think that people don't matter at all

could you make
a statement like that.

She was a housewife.
That's how they treated her.

I mean, of course, she was
a professional journalist.

That was not somehow..

When you want to dismiss her,
you just say

there was this housewife
from Hudson Street.

Try to mess
with a bunch of mothers.

Uh, I think that

he underestimated what the, uh

effectiveness of these mothers
might in fact be.

Literally thousands
of people turned to

and it took quite a few years,
but did save it.

It ended up being
an extraordinarily

potent opposition,
which he'd never met before.

Moses had never
met this before.

He had his, he had it coming.

Washington Square Park
was certainly

the first, uh, public defeat
for Robert Moses

and it was a, uh, uh,
a major chink in his armor.

The battle
over Washington Square

is, is Jane's first taste
of victory.

Not long after
the Washington Square victory

"Death And Life" is published.

And Bennett Cerf,
head of Random House

sends a copy to Robert Moses.

And Moses sends it back.

"I am returning
the book you sent me.

"Aside from the fact
that it is intemperate

"and inaccurate..

"...it is also libelous.

I call your attention,
for example, to page 131."

"Robert Moses has made
an art of using control

"of public money
to get his way

"with those whom the voters
elect and depend on

"to represent their frequently
opposing interests.

"This is, of course,
in other guises

an old, sad story
of democratic government."

He didn't even wanna recognize

the existence of the book
or of Jane.

Others, uh, were also,
uh, not charitable

including Lewis Mumford.

Lewis Mumford,
the great architectural critic

for "The New Yorker,"
his famous review of her book

had the title
Mother Jacobs' Home Remedies.

He's immediately telling you

Jane Jacobs was just
this sweet, old lady

trying to get some homeopathic
medicine into the city

instead of doing
the serious surgery

that a real doctor would do.

Right around the time

of "Death and Life
of Great American Cities"

ironically,
her own neighborhood

of the West Village,
the very neighborhood

that she had,
had proclaimed as a model

for what neighborhoods could be

was earmarked
for urban renewal.

Moses was commissioner
of, uh, housing

in the urban renewal effort
to build more public housing

in New York City.

He actually stepped down
from that position

but before he did

he designated
the West Village

as eligible
for slum designation.

I got the book
finished finally

and thought, ah, now I can
think about something else.

And for 3 weeks

I did think
about other things.

Then I opened the
"New York Times" one morning

and found that our own area
of the West Village

was going to have an urban
renewal project in it.

She really didn't think of
herself as a community organizer

as a, a street fighter
or that sort.

She was a writer.

She did not appreciate
the distraction.

She really didn't,
but she knew she had to do it.

She was sad. I mean,
she would shrug her shoulders.

What can I, what can I do?

You know that thing
about an inert object?

Well, there is nothing
more inert

than a government bureau.

There's nothing more inert
than a planning office.

It gets going
in one direction

and it is never going
to change of its own accord.

So I suddenly had to put
into practice my own premises

that if anything was
going to happen to reverse

the way things were being done

then the citizens had
to take some initiative

and the citizens had
to frustrate the planners.

I thereupon
began to devote myself

to frustrating planners.

And so did
the whole neighborhood.

Jane calls a meeting
of local residents

at The Lion's Head

a favorite
neighborhood hangout.

Organizes people to speak
at public meetings

and gets everybody
to wear sunglasses

with an X painted on them.

They were fairly sophisticated

I think, in the tactics
that they would employ

and they're tackling somebody
who's been writing

for a living
for a couple of decades

and knows how
to make an argument.

We all knew one another
and were constantly planning

on how to, uh,
get the mayor on our side

and how to threaten him.
And we did.

We got him on our side.

She filed a lawsuit
against the city of New York

to try to block
the urban renewal plan.

"I think
that the time has come

"to put the West Village

"urban renewal proposal
to rest.

"Promptly remove
the West Village designation.

Cordially, Robert F. Wagner."

They prevailed and, uh,
at the end of the day

the slum designation never
happened in the West Village.

She effectively showed the people of Greenwich Village

that they could fight city hall

that they did not
have to accept

the plans of the planners
at their drafting tables

and that they could
reject those lines

being drawn
around their homes.

We need to understand
Greenwich Village

is a proxy here for a wave

that was starting to take
hold in the United States

where there was
increasing resistance

to centralized authority.

Her strategy
was certainly informed

by other struggles that were
going on at the time.

Within 3 years of each other

Jacobs published her book.

Uh, Betty Friedan published
"The Feminine Mystique."

Rachel Carson
published "Silent Spring."

The Environmental Movement.

Civil Rights.

The movement
for decent cities

feminism, you know

all were being born at once

and all were sharing tools

of propaganda,
of local organizing

of civil disobedience.

Jane Jacobs was perhaps
the most articulate voice

of a movement that now seems

merely common sense.

Any city that's
tearing down its buildings

just to make money
for a development

or, uh, just to have novelty

is doing something criminal.

A fella who gets up
in the upper stories

of a, of a
public housing project

where he has a view,
what's the matter with him?

He's got a nice place
to live, hasn't he?

I think that the objection
that some might have

was that the view is just
of another housing development

and another highway.

No, I don't concede that.

It wasn't just
that they wanted

new housing
in place of the old.

They wanted an entirely
different-looking city.

Robert Moses
and his constituency

wanted it all to be
very simplified

very sterilized.

It was the hubris
of Moses and his ilk.

The idea that we're gonna
rearrange the spaces

and therefore,
we're gonna rearrange the social relations.

It had to do with this
towers-in-the-park mentality.

It had to do
with the creation

of a new form of ghetto.

Whole downtowns
were being bulldozed

in the name of people,
but not for the people.

They were destroying lives

and replacing them
with these housing projects.

And why?

Because it was making
a lot of people

a lot of money.

It was making developers
a lot of money

politicians a lot of money

and it was fast money.

So they kept doing it
over and over and over again

in cities
all over the country.

It was several years

after Robert Moses had begun
building these projects

that the other cities
caught up.

What they were building
was the Corbusier model.

You saw the kind
of building of these

uh, these housing projects
across the United States.

You know, 25 story
block apartment buildings

with playgrounds
and gardens around them

that looked great
in all the drawings.

Here in bright, new buildings

with spacious grounds,
they can live.

Live with indoor plumbing,
electric lights

fresh plastered walls and the
rest of the conveniences

that are expected
in the 20th century.

In these projects,
children can play in safety

on the wide lawns

not in the littered alleys
and vacant lots.

We must make sure
that every family in America

lives in a home of dignity

in a neighborhood of pride

and a community of opportunity

and a city of promise
and hope.

But what ended up happening
is nobody ever hung out

on, uh, in the kind of
public space around these

uh, projects
and so they became

these under-populated places.

And they actually
very quickly became

some of the most dangerous
places in the world.

Concentrated poverty.

This was a,
you know, the really

the worst thing
about, uh, the projects

and therefore, amplified
all of the pathological

and antisocial elements
of poverty.

These institutions
became fortressed.

You become cornered.
You feel cornered.

You feel trapped.

They left people
more vulnerable.

Public housing
became places of fear.

High-rise fortresses
like these

were built this way
to save money.

In the long run,
they didn't even do that.

The problem was
that they were all wrong

for the people
who wound up living in them.

Rural blacks, broken families

allowed in and to stay in

only if their incomes
were low enough.

Most cities now are engaged

in something
called urban renewal

which means
moving the Negroes out.

It means Negro removal.
That is what it means.

And the federal government
is an accomplice to this fact.

Now this, we are talking
about human beings.

There's not such a thing
as a monolithic wall

or, you know, some abstraction
called Negro problem.

These Negro boys and girls

who at 16 and 17 don't believe

the country means
anything that it says

and don't feel that
they have any place here.

The phrase, Urban renewal
is Negro removal

was an acknowledgement
by African-Americans

that, that this was
an assault.

Removal is in the sense of

out, over there,
away, far away.

Some place inhospitable
where you can just die.

And a huge part of
what happened to people was

that they were put
in inhospitable places.

And African-Americans were put
in at the margins of the city

in places that were,
could barely support

the vital kind of life
that people need to prosper.

It's as though the builders
have not realized

that children
would be living there

nor did they foresee the crime

the vandalism, which is really
the acting out of rage

and self-loathing
that can make people want

to destroy their own property.

People had lived
in communities

that were messy,
but they worked.

People had social capitals,
people watched

each other's child
when somebody was not there.

All this
was actually taken away.

People had
no investment emotionally.

People resented these projects
that had been built for them

because they were poor.

So you see
a lot of windows broken out.

They all were broken out
by children throwing rocks.

And, uh, what's more natural
than children throwing rocks?

They don't have
nothing else to do.

There's absolutely
no recreation facilities here.

And, uh,
the playground like this

is a mockery
for thousands of children.

Tenants had no input
as to what they wanted.

Uh, it was built
because somebody said

this would be good
for children to play on.

There were
graffiti everywhere

and there were drug problems
and all the problems

that you can imagine come from

when you uproot people
without their will.

And what do you expect, that
they will love these projects?

No, that wasn't gonna happen.

Pruitt-Igoe,
if you really see

an, uh, an aerial view of it

those buildings were spaced
quite a distance apart.

If you took them
and threw them on their faces

which is where
they should've fallen

you will get lovely housing
20 feet high.

You can take a look
at a little exercise here

that if these towers,
these slabs

are removed from the towers

you begin to see
a different attitude

of what is visible.

You begin to see through
the site

as opposed to looking
at a slab of buildings running.

One thing, the tenants
are really stressing

is for a low-rise building

closer to a home.

Something that
they can relate to.

What we are trying
to do here

is to take a given situation

and try to bring it back

to a community where people
would want to live.

After thinking
about the problem

of the
Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project

the city planners blew it up.

[Explosion]

Just dynamited it away.

The projects end up
being tremendous failures.

You know, we know all
about that failure now.

And everywhere they existed

30, 40 years later

they're all being torn down.

You can't put streets back
where you took them out.

You can't put stores back.

You can't put the daily life
and all the institutions.

It takes generations to build up those institutions.

That's what was eliminated
by these projects.

[Explosion]

The superblock urbanism
of the modernist ilk

that Jane Jacobs,
uh, writes about

is, is destroying cities.

You also have,
at the very same time

the automobile
being rammed through.

This causes as many problems

as the urban renewal projects.

The most profound influence

on the city
in the last hundred years

has been the automobile.

The decision
made almost inevitable

was to drive the freeways,
the interstates in some

right through the cities
and through neighborhoods

whose value city elites
and developers

wanted to ultimately reclaim.

We wouldn't have
any American economy

without
the automobile business.

That's literally true.

I believe that
that this is a great industry

that has to go on
and has to keep on turning out

cars and trucks and buses

and there have to be places
for them to run.

There have to be modern roads.

The first of Moses'
commandments for progress

is thou shalt drive.

Jane Jacobs was
one of the very first people

to say the car is not supreme.

The people who walk
on the sidewalk

are what makes the city.

It isn't hard to understand

that producing
and consuming automobiles

might seem all-important
to the management of Ford

and Chrysler
and General Motors.

But it's harder to understand
why the production

and consumption of automobiles
should be the purpose of life

for all the rest of us.

Moses was about realizing

a very particular vision
of the American dream.

That was, you know,
what's good for General Motors

is good for
the United States of America.

I'm privileged to present

the winner
of the Grand National Award.

Robert Moses of New York.

Robert Moses, New York City
Construction Coordinator

is a world-famous
highway planner.

A man who knows his business.

What he was really doing was
tearing up vital neighborhoods.

For example, in the South Bronx

where he built
the Cross Bronx Expressway.

This was the single most
destructive decision

ever made about US cities.

The Cross Bronx Expressway

an artery
whose history was marked by

such gigantic problems
of construction, financing

relocation
and organized obstruction

that it took 17 years
to complete.

The Cross Bronx Expressway
ripped through the heart

and the middle of the Bronx

creating
what was a wall between

what eventually was known as

the northern and the southern
part of the Bronx.

Robert Moses thought
he'd get away with anything.

Who's gonna stop him?

He's got all the city
politicians on his side

because he's bringing
a lot of federal money

from the
federal highway program.

And that gets passed around.

Today our greatest

single problem
is tenant removal.

The, uh, tendency on the part

of people in politics

as well as those
who are living on these

rights-of-way
who are immediately affected

is to assume that the people
who are doing this job

are unsympathetic.

They're even sadistic.

Well, of course,
that isn't the truth at all.

When Moses would ram the
Cross Bronx Expressway through

it was not just breaking down
the physical structure

of that borough literally

so south and north
become different

but the community.

When you remove
the daily life

when you remove the stores,
you remove the places

that constitute
where they spend time

what we would call
the public realm

the sidewalks, the bars,
the grocery stores

you remove the city.

And that's what
Jane Jacobs says.

You draw away the people
with a prescription

that is guaranteed
to hurt cities.

Well, you have to bull it
through. You've gotta do it.

It's like all these, these
things that have opposition.

The fact that 2000 people
come and agitate

against the extension
of an expressway

doesn't prove that you're not
gonna build the expressway.

So many of the problems
of the South Bronx grew directly

out of the devastation caused
by building that expressway.

Which, of course,
became totally gridlocked

15 minutes after it was open.

I mean, Moses thought
he was improving the city

by bringing it up-to-date

by making it work
for the automobile.

And as it became clear

that urban highways
were, in fact

uh, profoundly destructive

it really became a battle
between opposing forces.

Of course, in Lower Manhattan

uh, Moses,
uh, wanted to build a road

right across,
um, uh, the city there.

The Whole Cast Iron District

would've been
basically obliterated.

The Lower Manhattan Expressway

was to have connected
the Holland Tunnel

with the Williamsburg
and Manhattan Bridges.

It would've destroyed
most of SoHo.

We would've lost one
of the greatest inventories

of 19th century buildings,
not just in New York

but in the world.

The highways, of course

destroyed the neighborhoods

that they went through.

Where was this going to end?

The whole place was going
to be laced with highways.

What would we have left
of Manhattan?

On any day of the week,
if you walk along Canal Street

and it's often faster
than riding

this is what you'll see.

The crush of endless
waiting traffic.

Now look at the solution.

A Lower Manhattan Expressway

only practical
highway crossing

serving the Lower Manhattan

commercial
and business districts.

Can we afford to let
one section of our city

slowly strangle in hopeless
traffic congestion?

There was an awful campaign
against that neighborhood.

It was called
Hell's Hundred Acres.

A bottled-up,
stagnating section of the city.

No new private buildings
erected in 30 years.

A valley
of economic depression.

The need is urgent.

We must have a Lower Manhattan
Expressway now.

The local priest
in a church on Broom Street

had heard about Jane's

successful defenses
fighting Moses

and asked if she could help.

Father, what effect do you feel

that the expressway will have
on the neighborhood?

Well, the expressway will,
will destroy the neighborhood.

This is the worst thing
about these monumental plans.

There is no way there

that old buildings
can easily be torn down

and new ones put up.

Old things adapted
to different use.

It's settled.

Well, that's not planning
for the future.

Reminded of some
of the opposition

to his longtime dream
for an expressway

across Lower Manhattan

Moses was specific
about what it takes

to override
the inevitable roadblocks.

You gotta move people.

And that,
the political leaders

naturally, if they have
people ticketed

and they know where they are
and they vote right

they don't wanna move 'em
and have 'em go somewhere else.

What I try to do,
uh, in New York

what we've done successfully
in other places

which is to pay more money
to people in cash.

Come take the money
and go away.

You got people who rent.
They don't own anything.

So what different does it make

when you're talking
about a, uh, an expressway

that costs
84 million dollars?

Stop being victims.

I think it's wicked

in a way, to be a victim.

It's even wickeder
to be a predator

but it's wicked to be
a victim and allow it.

You can't, as an individual,
you can't do anything

but you can organize.

If you're being victimized
by an expressway

that a bureaucracy
is putting through

for the benefit
of the automobile people

then you fight that you refuse
to be a victim of that.

What effect do you think
this will have

on the neighborhood itself?

It will destroy
the neighborhood.

It's one of the few
neighborhoods that you can..

A woman can go down the streets
at night and be safe.

And the women know it
and I know it.

2 or 3 o'clock in the morning

the men are sitting
in the cafes

and they're watching you,
taking care of you.

You wanna build
up neighborhoods like this.

They say let's get back
to the old, safe neighborhoods.

This is it!

Memorandum to Arthur Hodgkiss
from Robert Moses.

"The Lower Manhattan
will move very soon.

Please keep an eye on it."

Mr. Simon,
are you saying that

they're trying
to sneak it through?

I would say it's a sleeper.

If this thing is passed, uh

these are how
these things happen.

If they're not watched,
uh, it's a sleeper.

Who do you think
is pushing this?

Well, uh,
there's only one man

that I can think of
that can be pushing.

They seem to think
that they have a choice.

That they'd rather stay
in the houses

that they've lived in
all this time.

The whole federal
arterial aid program

running into billions of dollars

depend upon the votes of a few

a very few people
in one section.

We wouldn't build anything.
Nothing would be built.

There'd be no highways,
there'd be no -- no housing.

There, there'd be
no public improvements.

Please do not build
this express highway.

Most of these people
consider automobiles

more than the human being.

It is not right!

I think it's awful.

I don't think it's fair.

I don't think it's very good

'cause I live there,
I look out my window.

The truck, the car
and everything.

They don't need expressway.

What they gonna do,
throw me in the street?

After 51 years,
I'm citizen and everything?

There's something awful
to think every day

they gonna throw you out.

I think it's awful thing.
They make me sick.

I hope God
they have to be damn sick.

That's what I hope. Goodbye.

Thank you.

It was gonna be
a defining hearing

in which they would approve
the expressway.

And Jane said,
when they discuss this issue

I'm gonna get up
and I'm gonna speak against it.

I went up, uh,
to the microphone.

I was very angry.
They weren't listening to us.

They had made their decision.
That was clear.

They were really
only errand boys

who had no power
to make decisions.

So we had better let them
take back a message.

We would never stand
for this expressway.

I intended just to climb up
to their level

and walk across the stage.

There was a stenotypist

who had a new machine.

She was frightened

and she picked up
her stenotype machine

and clasped it to her bosom.

The tapes fell out
of the machine

and ran across the floor
like confetti.

People began tossing it
in the air.

I knew it had
to be brought to an end

so an inspiration struck me.

I said, "There is no hearing

"because the record is gone.

And without a record,
there can't be a hearing."

The chief state person
was saying

"Arrest that woman.
Arrest that woman."

As I went out,
police captain told me that

uh, I was arrested.

The police
were very apologetic.

They knew who she was
and what was going on.

She was charged
with 3 felonies

which is pretty rotten
for what she did.

What did she do?
She didn't hurt anybody.

She became the hero.

And the politics did shift
at that point.

The Board of Estimate
in an executive session today

voted unanimously
to turn down the proposal

for a
Lower Manhattan Expressway.

The board -- Please.

[Applause]

That was the decisive moment.

And Moses
couldn't do anything.

He was just a pure villain.

The politicians were villains.

At that point, it was clear
that no politicians

were gonna get away with this.

The Lower Manhattan Expressway

was really the beginning
of the end for Robert Moses.

Robert Moses
was finally squeezed out

by Nelson Rockefeller,
who as Governor of New York

might have been
the first public official

powerful enough
to call his bluff.

Moses was famous
for threatening to resign

when he was unhappy
with something.

Rockefeller said
at one point okay

and Moses had no choice.

He couldn't back down
and he was gone.

After the Moses' expressway
situation was finally settled

Jane felt she could go
to Canada with her typewriter

and become a writer again.

Her husband,
who was an architect

was building hospitals
up there.

And their sons were there
be, to keep out of the

that awful Vietnam War.

Of course, as soon as
she got to Toronto

she, she saw there was
another expressway

heading right for her house

the Spadina Expressway.

She stopped that too.

And then got to work.

The Lower Manhattan Expressway

was officially dead
in the year 1970.

Meanwhile, across the country

these kinds of freeway revolts
were taking place

and similar roadways
were being defeated.

But the Lower Manhattan
Expressway

was really
the leading example.

If that had happened,
there would be no SoHo.

The entire history
of development

and redevelopment
and adaptive reuse in the city

would've played out
in a different way.

It would've been
the single most

damaging intervention
in the urban fabric

in Manhattan
in the 20th century, period.

A city is not just
a physical object.

The city is a living thing.

It will always morph
and change.

Our goal has to be to manage
change well

not to freeze it in time.

As cities around the world
are obliged to house

this dramatically
increasing population

we still have
the conversation in terms of

top down versus bottom up

formality versus informality.

These are
the eternal polarities

of thinking about the city.

If you go to China,
you see huge swathes

of farmland that
are now being urbanized

in exactly the model
that America used in 1950s

and we know that it failed.

China today is Moses
on steroids, you know.

And the notion that Moses
could not have conceived

of this extraordinary
scaling up

of what it means to build.

In that sense,
history has outdone him.

These isolated developments

with hundreds
of similar-looking blocks

with no urbanism, no street

who can live in them and how would you live in them?

What they are building today,
I think..

...is the slums of the future.

And they're made in concrete.

They're gonna last
at least 60 years.

We are condemning
future generations

to an absolute world
without hope.

Given the scale
of the problem we have

that makes a completely
different context..

...in which Jane Jacobs'
ideas again now

have a new incarnation.

"It is so easy to blame
the decay of cities

"on traffic or immigrants..

"...or the whimsies
of the middle class.

"The decay of cities goes deeper and is more complicated.

"It goes right down
to what we think we want

and to our ignorance
about how cities work."

With the amount of people
who now need to live in cities

you have to accept that you're
going to need more density.

But a lot of densely
built up terrain..

...is not a city.

If, when we're to build a city

no matter how fast it is

without building
a great public realm

you don't have a city.

That's what
Jane Jacobs talks about.

Historically,
solutions to city problems

have very seldom come
from the top.

They come from people

who understand
the problems firsthand

'cause they're living
with them

and who have new and ingenious

and often very offbeat ideas
of how to solve them.

The creativity and the concern

and the ideas down there
in city neighborhoods

and city communities
has to be given a chance

has to be released.

People have
to insist on government

trying things their way.

If you gave people
an environment

that they could
shape themselves

they would
not only be happier..

...but you would
have a completely

different kind of city.

The problem for people
who are planning

and designing and thinking about all this new urban tissue

that's being created
is how to take some of these

incredibly valuable lessons
that Jane Jacobs teaches

um, and apply them
to the project of creating

the places where,
uh, all of these

billions of people
are going to live.

The key thing
about Jane Jacobs

much more important than loving stoops and streets and stuff

was a willingness
to be skeptical

a willingness to doubt
the received wisdom..

...and to trust our eyes
instead.

"Under the seeming disorder
of the old city

"wherever the old city
is working successfully..

"...is a marvelous order
for maintaining the safety

"of the street

"and the freedom of the city.

"It is a complex order.

"This order is all composed
of movement and change.

"And although it is life,
not art..

"...we may fancifully call
it the art form of the city..

"...and liken it to the dance.

"Not to a simpleminded
precision dance

"with everyone kicking up
at the same time

"twirling in unison
and bowing off en masse..

"...but to an intricate ballet

"in which the individual
dancers and ensembles

"all have distinctive parts..

"...which miraculously
reinforce each other..

...and compose
an orderly whole."

[Instrumental music]