THE Q&A: ANTHONY FLINT, HISTORIAN, AUTHOR, URBAN PLANNER

Thirteen bridges, 637 miles of highway, two tunnels, 17 parks and 658 playgrounds have the handprints of Robert Moses. He was like an imperious child determined to build his every whim, and New York City was his giant erector set. But the city's Master Builder met an unlikely match in Jane Jacobs, a self-educated journalist and housewife who fell in love with Greenwich Village. “Wrestling with Moses”, a new book by Anthony Flint, chronicles the rivalry that would forever change the field of urban planning.

New Yorkers can't imagine a roadway through beloved Washington Square Park. High-rises up historic Hudson Street are unthinkable. And the vision of a superhighway coursing through SoHo and the Lower East Side could make any Manhattanite shudder. Masterminded by Moses and his successors, these three projects were the object of Jacobs's grassroots protests during the 1950s and 60s, and are the backbone of the book, a David and Goliath tale.

It's easy to make out Jacobs as a saviour and Moses as a villain, but the author avoids simplistic characterisation. “In a broad sense, Moses’s appreciation for the importance of infrastructure was as important as Jacobs’s embrace of human-scale neighbourhoods,” he explained over the phone in an interview after the book was released this summer.

Flint, who reported on city planning and transportation for the Boston Globe for 16 years, now works at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think-tank that considers planning and urban reform. We caught up with him to discuss the legacy of Moses and Jacobs as well as gentrification, the stimulus package and how Barack Obama might influence the life of American cities.

More Intelligent Life: Did Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses ever meet face to face?

Anthony Flint: As far as I was able to tell, they never had an actual face-to-face exchange. They circled around each other like tigers in a cage. Jane reported on one board of estimate meeting, about the proposal for the roadway through Washington Square, where she witnessed Moses being quite frustrated with the campaign to stop the roadway, and he said, “There’s nobody against this but a bunch of Mothers.”

MIL: The media loves a “David and Goliath” story. How much did Jacobs’s persona as an underdog in the media help her garner influence?

AF: She was quite savvy with the media. She orchestrated photo-ops like ‘tying the ribbon’ at Washington Square Park, in contrast to a ribbon-cutting. And she always made sure there were lots of kids around, operating like Karl Rove. During the 1950s and 60s the newspaper reporters kind of took dictation from Robert Moses and were pretty fawning. He knew how to manipulate the media, but the remarkable thing is that Jane could come along and undermine that position of strength to beat him at his own game.

MIL: The book is structured around Jacobs’s biggest contributions in New York. Which are the three most positive contributions that Moses made to life in New York City?

AF: The Triboro Bridge, for its time and for the way that it functions to this day, is a pretty critical piece of infrastructure. Jones Beach attracts millions of people over the course of a summer. You could argue that he should have done more to create better public transit access to the beach, but he was operating at a time when everyone thought that driving a car was going to be a very liberating thing for the working class. And the work that Moses did on New York City parks during the 1930s is extraordinary for its recognition of green space and recreational space in the city. His heart was in the right place when he made those improvements. He was responsible for the Central Park Zoo, improvements in Prospect Park, and dozens of smaller parks and playgrounds that he spruced up. He recognised that a coat of paint and plantings and a clean interesting place for kids to play went along way.

MIL: Today Jane Jacobs’s own apartment at 555 Hudson is on the market for $3.5m, a far cry from the affordable housing she championed. What was her take on gentrification in Manhattan?

AF: She addressed gentrification early on and recognised that it was a problem in what I call "the curse of revitalising cities". She was in synch with Moses in believing that if you increase the supply of housing it would become a matter of supply and demand and prices would level out. She called it "over-success" when places like Greenwich Village become so popular and desirable. In a way gentrification sort of proved her point. It’s no surprise that places like Greenwich Village become so popular and desirable; it’s because they are great places.

MIL: The federal stimulus package was expected to create great opportunities for states to begin new construction on roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure. Could we use a Moses type figure?

AF: Moses was a product of his time. If he had put all of that energy into building and expanding a world-class transit network he would be regarded as a hero today. We might already have the 2nd Avenue Subway line, for instance. Having a guy like Moses around would be quite helpful now.

MIL: Are there any individuals emerging as Robert Moses-type figures?

AF: There is an emerging coalition of business leaders, environmental activists and others (including the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy where I work) who are calling for a national plan for infrastructure. This collection of civic leaders and politicians includes Bob Yaro of the Regional Planning Association, and Governor Ed Rendell, a big leader on infrastructure. The Rockefeller Foundation has also supported this idea for a regional plan. We’ve got the first urban president that we’ve had in a long time, and I would add President Obama to that list of leaders because he really does get it. He talks a lot about cities and the importance of cities as economic engines and hubs of innovation. Eighty percent of the population lives in metropolitan regions and I’ve really come to appreciate the way that Jane Jacobs left us an owner’s manual for livable cities and how Moses recognised the importance of infrastructure.

"Wrestling with Moses" by Anthony Flint (Random House) is out now.

~ LYNDA HAMMES