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Max Page, professor of architecture and history and director of Historic Preservation Initiatives at UMass Amherst, is featured in the new documentary film “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,” which examines the life and work of New York City urban activist Jane Jacobs.

The movie explores Jacob’s political and bureaucratic battles with nemesis Robert Moses, the New York power broker whose urban redevelopment methods were often marked, in Page’s words, by “a highway ripped through an old neighborhood.”

Jacobs, a freelance writer and neighborhood activist, managed a number of successes for historic New York City, including saving Washington Square Park in 1959 and Greenwich Village in 1961 and stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway in 1962. Her grassroots activism to protect neighborhoods at times involved civil disobedience.

Page said Jacobs’ revered 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” is “one of the reasons I got interested in the study of cities.”

His admiration of Jacobs also led to “Reconsidering Jane Jacobs,” a book he co-edited with Timothy Mennel for the 50th anniversary of “Death and Life.”

Page’s participation on camera in “Citizen Jane” stems from several hours of discussion involving director Matt Tyrnauer and others who would be among the “talking heads” in the movie: Thomas J. Campanella of Cornell; Jerold Kayden of the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and Robert Hammond, a co-founder of the High Line, an elevated freight rail line transformed into a public park on Manhattan’s West Side, near Jane Jacobs’ old home, and which has become one of the city’s most visited attractions.

Jacobs, who later moved to Toronto where she continued a life of urban activism until her death in 2006, remains an inspiration to architects and urban planners.

“She upended not only Moses, but a whole way of thinking about cities,” Page said.

“Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” is in theaters and on-demand. Details here.

This article was originally published by the UMass Amherst Office of News and Media Relations.

Image: Jane Jacobs from the documentary "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City." (IFC Films / Sundance Selects / Library of Congress)