1960年，简·雅各布（Jane Jacobs）的“美国伟大城市的死亡与生命”（The Life and Life of Great American Cities）通过建筑和规划世界发起了冲击，探索了现代规划师和建筑师重新配置城市的后果。 雅各布斯也是一名活动家，他参与了纽约纽约中部的许多战斗活动，以阻止“大师建造者”罗伯特·摩西（Robert Moses）在城市中肆虐。 随着城市化进入全球议程的前列，这部电影回溯了由雅各布和摩西人格化的城市之战。 制定解决城市问题的令人眼花缭乱的一系列解决方案的许多线索可以在雅各布的预言文本中找到，并且仔细观察她对城市的思考和写作非常有意义。 这部电影预告了今天的城市，虽然是其最伟大的冠军之一的镜头。

  In 1960 Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities. Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city. This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today though the lens of one of its greatest champions.