The photograph presented above is a still of New York University’s campus in the Bronx location. It is incredibly astonishing to view New York University in this setting — secluded, humbly compact, and located in a predominantly low income borough of New York City. The NYU campus we know of today expands to a large area near Washington Square, and encompasses a dental, medical, business, and law school along with its undergraduate university. In our readings, we have explored how Robert Moses transformed the city of New York in the post-World War II era.
One of his goals for New York City was to heighten higher education (universities) by expanding their estates. He helped to expand Long Island University’s campus in downtown Brooklyn, the Julliard School, and many others. An interesting concept brought up in “Robert Moses and Urban Renewal” by Hillary Ballon was the justification for the expansion of New York University specifically. Moses knew that this institution would not provide a direct dollar income to many, but instead, expanding this prestigious university would be for a broader public purpose. He believed that it would add value to adjacent areas of the neighborhood, and provide a greater security for private investors. Robert Moses’s thought process was best described as being centered around a tunnel vision of rebuilding New York City through a singular perspective. He emphasized focusing more on the public, rather than individuals, and the metropolis area, rather than distinct neighborhoods. When it came to community building, he took a real estate project approach. This was the line of defense the readings carried to attempt to explain his blatant disregard for many low-income residents. He prioritized building New York City to be a thriving city, rather than focus on the citizens he is displacing. This explained his slum clearance projects, which inevitably turned out to turn tricky, as he was attempting to create residential buildings that were affordable for middle class people living out in the suburbs, but instead turned out to create luxury housing. He failed to realize that by displacing the residents of the slum areas, and creating a slum clearance, he inadvertently created more slums, as the displaced people had to reside in areas they could afford to live in.
My argument resides around the fact that he seemed to turn a blind eye towards citizens during the slum clearance project, but when it came to expanding institutions that did not provide direct dollar incomes, he was adamant about instilling expansion of these higher institutions. This proves that Moses did not have as great a depth “tunnel vision” as many point him out to be. Higher institutions during the time period were mostly attended by middle and high class residents, and tended to exclude low income families and immigrants. Moses might have even been unknowingly drive out these people in his attempt to create his perfect idea of New York City. We cannot attest for every reason Moses created university expansions and slum clearances, but it struck me as elusive to grasp why he seemed to flip flop with his ideals when it came to empathizing with the citizens of the very city he rebuilt.
Image came from source (x).
