Robert Moses: An Industrial Visionary or Ruthless Dictator

Robert Moses is seen by many as a revolutionary who changed the landscape of New York City with his conviction in his beliefs and a will to change the city for the betterment of the middle class. However his aggressive personality and powerful beliefs to apply his vision to the entirety of New York City came at the expense of many. Moses built bridges, highways, houses, and used Title 1 to create multiple expansive projects destroying slums and creating new modernized buildings in accordance with his vision. However the problem with Moses’ vision was that these new slums relocated massive amounts of people that originally lived in the already condensed area that was renovated. And with the increase in living prices associated with the projects Moses was building projects the lower classes could not afford even though the new areas for are built on property they previously had lived in. This led to a massive relocation of many poorer families leading to Moses gaining a dual perception as both a tenacious visionary and a inconsiderate uncultured dictator forcing his vision leading to large scale movements of people form their homes.

Moses’ continued efforts in destroying slums and relocating people however further met with more and more opposition and newspapers and the general public were beginning to condemn Moses’ vision for New York City. The man who was praised for his constructions of new highways and buildings was being pictured as a tyrant who oppressed those who disagreed with his beliefs and ignored the needs of the people he pushed out of his new modern building projects. The picture shows people standing against Moses holding up signs saying “Moses the Dictator” and “No More Monuments Moses” showing the clear dissent against Moses continued renovations and misplacing of the poor in favor of more expensive middle class communities. It’s a perfect representation of the growing opposition against what they viewed as Moses’ tyrannical reign and abuse of his power. The attire of those shown in the picture also indicate that they are lower and middle class, maybe even those that had their homes teared down by Mose and were those who were forced to relocate. Eventually protesters such as these are how Moses eventually met his downfall as his he was shut down by Jane Jacobs and a group of other activists which refused to let him tear down Greenwich Village. The constant protests and fight against Moses eventually shut him down and brought an end to the power hungry official.

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