Last week, I went to see Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, a documentary on Jane Jacobs’ work as an urban planning writer and activist, with a particular focus on her battles to save New York City from some godawful ideas about cutting up more of Manhattan with roads and highways.
The film highlights two wonderful, symbiotic things that speak to Jacobs’ success in pushing back on destructive ideas: first, her work promoting thriving communities inside of cities; and second, how those very communities were able to collectively fight back against construction plans that would have torn them apart.
That power of communities, and the amount of work that goes into building vibrant and diverse ones, is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past two weeks. One question I’ve had in particular: why is it that the internet, which has the same potential for building communities as a city, so often fails to do so?
Check out 10 trailers from this week below.
Ghost in the Shell
I’ve never seen the original Ghost in the Shell, so I can’t comment on how this trailer looks in comparison, but as a first-time viewer I’ll say that the visuals in this trailer are just incredible — they’re dense, colorful, alive, and pretty wonderful simply to stare at. I might already be sold on this. (Though I do wonder if a skin-tight robo-oufit, or whatever it is, was really a necessary costume…) It’ll be out March 31st.