Robert Moses represents a significant and controversial figure in New York City’s history. He represents a man who was pivotal in creating the layout and outlook of the city as it is today, as well as a man who worked to bring his vision to reality without care for those who served as collateral damage. In Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson’s Robert Moses and the Transformation of New York, Moses and his plans for the city were discussed and debated, outlining the goals he wanted to achieve and how he achieved them. Moses advocated for complete urban redevelopment, leading the largest slum clearance program in the 1950s (Ballon 94). In doing so, he aimed to bring back the middle class with affordable housing to reduce the polarization between the two extremes of the social class spectrum, to establish New York as a center of higher education by making land available for university expansion, and to elevate the status of the city in the nation and the world through installations of different “world-class cultural institutions” (Ballon 106). Finally, he wanted to create expressways throughout the city as a more efficient way of traveling through automobile rather than the “ancient relic” of the public transport system (Jackson 68-69). He argued that the city was built “by and for traffic” (Fishman 125). From his perspective, the city needed to be redeveloped in order to make it more efficient and uniform, as well as to create a center of success and culture known across the globe.
Expanding Higher Education
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.
A Burgeoning Education in New York City
A plentiful read in Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York is his Title I program, where Moses advocated for the tearing down of slums, relocation of original tenants, and subsequent rebuilding of new infrastructure. Moses believed that by providing incentives for institutions of higher education, the value of and interest in New York City would skyrocket. He viewed slums as a nuisance that must be eradicated, and acted as the mediator between the private and public sectors. While Moses undoubtedly spearheaded projects with visible significance to this day, we can argue that his vision for New York City was tainted with issues, in the ideological, business, and public welfare aspects.
Robert Moses and the Decline of the NYC Subway System
Robert Moses is unarguably one of the greatest influences in the development of New York City. What is arguable, and in fact heavily debated, is whether his work had a more positive or negative effect on the city. Continue reading “Robert Moses and the Decline of the NYC Subway System”
WNYC: “Robert Moses and the Transformation of New York”
Kenneth T. Jackson, director of the Herbert H. Lehman Center for the Study of American History and the Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, where he has also chaired the department of history, and the author of Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (Norton, 2008), and Lisa Keller, professor of history at SUNY Purchase and the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale University Press, 2010), talk about Robert Moses for the latest installment of the October election year series, People’s Guide to Power: Real Estate Edition. (Source: WNYC)
