Toronto Star

However tempting it may be to view the world in black and white, it exists mainly in shades of grey. According to conventional wisdom, there's Robert Moses, the champion of the mega-project and urban renewal, in one corner. In the other, there's Jane Jacobs, the great defender and interpreter of the city, and its web of organized chaos. To many, it's either one or the other, right and wrong, with no middle ground permissible. Perhaps it's not hard to understand why; we live in polarized times, as obsessed with blame as credit. And certainly when Jacobs emerged as a civic leader in Manhattan in the 1960s, it was to fight against another of Moses' grands projets, a highway that would have cut through the heart of a living neighbourhood and destroyed a community in the process. By the time that battle was won (by Jacobs and her allies), the tide was turning against the Mosaic point of view. When Jacobs and her family moved to Toronto in 1968, she immediately got involved in a battle to stop another urban highway, the Spadina Expressway, which she and her allies also won.