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| Corner of 4th & South, 1963 and 2011. |
In
1968, the same year Jane Jacobs was arrested during a protest against the Lower
Manhattan Expressway, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi took up the fight
against the Philadelphia City Planning Commission's scheme to replace South
Street with a cross-town highway. Hanging in the balance was the premise that
cities can be shaped and formed to meet the needs of their residents.
After
the plans for the 'Crosstown Expressway' were made public, the Citizens’
Committee to Preserve and Develop the Crosstown Community (CCPDCC) formed to
unite the communities of the South Street corridor against the highway and to
create an alternative vision.[1] A driving factor behind the opposition was the
idea that communities have a right to self-determination. This concept grew as
a response to the power of planners in shaping urban environments, which
arguably hadn't changed since the sweeping plans of Fredrick Law Olmstead and
the City Beautiful movement transformed cities earlier in the century. However,
the seeming absolute power that figures like Robert Moses engendered in
treating populated neighborhoods as blank slates contrasted starkly with democratic
principles.
