Jane Jacobs Ends, Robert Moses Means

On the Yeoman Podcast discussing why the difference matters.

One of the things that stayed with me from a recent conversation with Geoff Graham on his Yeoman Podcast was how often people agree on what they want for cities yet still end up completely at odds over how to get there.

Much of the discussion circled around a familiar tension: the desire for outcomes associated with Jane Jacobs — great streets, local resilience, human-scaled places — paired with an enduring faith in Robert Moses–style means: centralized authority, comprehensive plans, and the belief that smarter technocrats can impose the right solution.

Strong Towns has always rejected that pairing. Not because the goals are wrong, but because the method matters. Again and again, the conversation came back to the same idea: durable places aren’t built through vision imposed from above, but through humility, iteration, and bottom-up adjustment over time.

What struck me most in this conversation was how that mindset shows up everywhere. In skepticism of the word “urbanist,” in the critique of performative efficiency, and even in conversations about monetary policy. The throughline isn’t ideology. It’s a deep discomfort with systems that optimize for scale and control while externalizing risk and fragility.

I’m sharing the conversation not to resolve these debates, but to name the distinction. You can want good ends and still do real harm with the wrong means. Strong Towns’ insistence on starting small, observing carefully, and letting places evolve may feel frustratingly modest, but that restraint is the point.