> large-scale, top-down, "inhuman", car or transit-focused, urban spaces are bad You are combining a few different strands there. There are people who think br

> large-scale, top-down, "inhuman", car or transit-focused, urban spaces are bad You are combining a few different strands there. There are people who think brutalist megastructures are dehumanizing but who are generally pro-car. Likewise you shouldn't conflate car-friendly and transit-friendly approaches to planning: they are very different. Top-down planning is ever-present to varying degrees. Jacobs' nemesis Robert Moses wanted to do extremely serious surgery on Manhattan, with the assistance of the architect Paul Rudolph. Luckily it didn't happen, though other major projects went ahead. It was part of the whole post-war prioritization of the car (in Europe and America) which is now seen a mistake, and you will not find serious theorists defending it. You ask for a counterargument to Jacobs' ideas, but I think that invites a dualistic framing of the problems. See e.g. this article: https://archpaper.com/2016/05/best-use-abuse-criticize-jane-jacobs/ https://archpaper.com/2016/05/best-use-abuse-criticize-jane-... In terms of examples of successful modernist planning which are seen as a desirable model today, Neave Brown's Alexandra Road estate in London might be of interest. It's a megastructure, concrete, alongside a major railway line, with uncompromising modernist aesthetics. There is parkland, but not an ocean of space which isolates blocks from circulation routes. (This is a common criticism of the Zeilenbau/Corbusian approach to planning, which has to be weighed against the benefits of having greenery between blocks). It is an immense "gesture" of structure which follows the curve of the railway, but faces away from it to control noise levels. I'm mentioning all this because it is the particular architectural decisions and strategies that make the difference. It's not a result of picking one side or the other in the Moses/Jacobs debate. You could perhaps argue that it represents a third way, but there are many possibilities. If there is a meaningful countercurrent to Jacobs' ideas, it's the idea of pursuing architecture/planning itself rather than an ad-hoc folksy urbanism.