12. Review of 'Citizen Jane'_TMBTP

This Must Be The Place In this installment of This Must Be the Place Elizabeth and David give a post-film review, along with Rebecca Clements (and also a bit of help from Trent and Casper), of the Jane Jacobs documentary “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”. As is discussed, the film features a fantastic variety of archival footage and also has very high production values. It tells the iconic mid-20th century story of battles over freeways, slum clearances, high rise housing towers, the ‘cancer’ analogy that propelled urban renewal projects, and the frontlines between grassroots activism and top-down planning orthodoxy more broadly. Perhaps for planners there isn’t so much to learn from the film – Elizabeth and David to this end use the word “undergraduate” in the same sniffy way that chilled Elizabeth long ago (hearing Virigina Woolf describing James Joyce’s Ulysses, and wondering how hard someone would have to work to be so far up themselves). But there are several interesting insights into Jacobs’ background as a journalist, and it’s also worth revisiting her ideas afresh rather than tending to rely on what these ideas have been distilled into over the ensuing decades. The film celebrates – sometimes with a heavy, sappy hand – the inherent value of people and community, and makes a strong case for political engagement. To quote Jacobs, “I think it’s wicked, in a way, to be a victim” Also discussed in the review: pre-war Robert Moses as ‘bully for the people’; issues with looking at public and high-rise houses only from the outside; OTT choices of music; the Pruitt Igoe myth; gentrification (not, notably, discussed in the film); differences between preservation and life; Jacob’s glasses (I think – well we should have); and the challenge of accommodating nuance in a film while still making it compelling. Also some other stuff – part of which is set to the slightly distracting “ears on the street” soundtrack of Federation Square of a Friday evening. “Citizen Jane” was shown at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. It’s great to watch and also an excellent curiosity builder for a general audience. And if you’re a planner, you’ll no doubt see several people you know in the audience.