This week reading brings about a wide array of views concerning the urban planning authority, Robert Moses, and their cooperating yet sometime rivaling relationship.
The author points out contemporary public criticisms about Moses, which we all know are numerous, yet I was surprised to read that Moses only could have gotten his way because his view and the view of the government coincided at that time (here we should neglect the fact that Moses did have enormous political influence). Moses’ dismal taste on housing design, surprisingly, was in compliant with the NYCHA design standard. It turns out that such a “standard,” demonstrated by “the lack of toilet bowl covers and closet doors” with special credit to Alfred Rheinstein’s “innovation” (128), was legally accepted back in the day because the NYCHA adopted the nature of a housing factory that churned out standardized, mass-produced products. Not only so, Moses and the NYCHA shared the same preference for “genuine slum clearance.”
It was interesting to see that sometime people who share the same vision often dispute upon the mean to its fruition, as in the case of the rivalry between Moses and the NYCHA during the post-war era. Moses wanted his masterpieces to be built upon slum clearance sites whereas the NYCHA rather constructed upon wastelands, or vacant land sites. Chairman Butler, before losing his seat due to his fervent opposition to Moses, claimed that project on vacant land sites would eliminate the time-consuming process of relocating residents in slums, all the while driving upward spending on public transportation. I felt sorry for the guy, although not too much, since his allegiance with Moses on the issue of overall slum clearance would later backfire as a backstabbing move to Moses which later drove Moses to remove Butler of the high seat in the NYCHA.
Besides the often-overlooked effects that slum clearance brought about i.e. racial integration as in the case of black and Pueto Rican slums residents, after being discharged from their Manhattan haven, were integrated in government housing projects in Bronx neighborhood. Yet in the proverbial list of pros and cons, the cons often outweigh the pros. Slum clearance practically destroyed the neighborhood, created public outrage over the clearance itself and over the loss of so many “brownstones.” And in most cases, public housing in most cities created a “second ghetto” worse than the first.
After running wild for a while, both Moses and the NYCHA were finally forced by the state government to integrate different income classes through slum clearance projects, for it is doubtful that Moses sincerely thought, without political pressure, that slum clearance areas will logically adjoin public housing areas” (133). Criticism from the state commissioner of housing at the time Herman Stichman substantially contributed the Moses and NYCHA’s cooperation. He said that the concentration of subsidized housing projects led to the development of ghettos that impeded meetings of different classes in the neighborhood and thus prevented empathic class feeling. The result of Title I redevelopment was the ultimate culmination of government’s effort to “positivize” slum clearance. It did not only celebrate Moses’ redevelopment scheme but also became the key of linking middle and high class houses with subsidized housing.
