When I first read about Robert Moses and all of his accomplishments, it seems like he was a really great man who did a lot for the city. While it is true that he did a lot and the city would be vastly different if it weren’t for him, there is also another view of him and many critics don’t agree with everything that he built and what he did to build them. Moses wasn’t evil by any means, and I believe that all that he accomplished and his lasting legacy on the city of New York is much greater and important what the negatives of what he did.

One of the negatives of what Moses did was the amount of people that we evicted and displaced. There is no accurate number for the number of people displaced, but it is estimated to be close to half a million. Most of the housing he built was for the rich, and the housing he built for the poor was bleak and cheap. It can be argued that what Moses did was for the greater good of the city and society and that it benefited much many more people that it harmed. It’s really difficult to decide when it’s worth it to move so many people out of their homes, if ever, but it not really a rare thing to do, and looking at how New York is now, maybe it was justifiable in those cases.

The most surprising thing I learned about Robert Moses is just how much power he had. It’s quite surprising seeing as how he was never elected to public office and was appointed to the positions he held. He was given the positions he wanted, and like the interaction with Robert F. Wagner showed, he could just threaten to resign and he would get what he wanted. Going along with this, I hadn’t read before about Moses hiring skilled investigators who kept dossiers on city officials. This added to his power since all the city officials knew about the dossiers and knew what he could do to them. This sounds like what power crazy men would do, which I guess Moses might be considered as.

I think that the city could use someone like Moses today. As Kenneth T. Jackson wrote, Moses was unusual in his ability to get the resources needed to see a project from conception to completion. The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was finished under budget and three months early the Tappan Zee Bridge, not built by Moses, was over budget and opened late. It seems like things take a really long time to get done and be built nowadays, like with the Barclays Center, whether is financial or legal issues, and I think it might be good to have someone really ambitious and a go-getter to build large projects.

At the end of Jackson’s chapter, he writes that Moses made it possible for New York to remain in the front rank of world cities in the 21^st century. If it weren’t for Moses, the city might have deteriorated so bad that it couldn’t be brought back to prosperity. I wonder if this is really true, the city couldn’t have bounced back without Moses. This is something the readings make me thing about, along with whether another builder could’ve have emerged. Maybe would there just be less highways, bridge, public parks, and other things he build now, and how much different would the city?

The tour of the Making Room exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York was a lot better and interesting than I expected it to be. The most informative things I learned were the statistics about how people in the city live. The museum had various statistics about the amount of people living alone in the city, unrelated adults living together, couples with no children, and some others. Most of these were what I expected, like how there are mostly people living alone in the city, and especially in Manhattan. When the tour guide was telling show showing us all of these statistics, I was just thinking about how accurate theses numbers really were. I’m guessing that a lot of people don’t answer surveys and such, like with the Census Bureau, so the numbers and percentages are probably off.

I was surprised to learn that New York City only ranked number 17 in the country with the most single households. I expected it to be in the top five at least. I always think of the city as a place where people come alone when they’re relatively young to find jobs and try to make it. I guess there must be other reasons for the large amount of single households in other cities, some of which I was surprised by, like Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Something else I found informative and interesting were the laws about living spaces. The most surprising law is that it’s illegal for more that three unrelated adults to live together. This is something that I, and I would think many people don’t know. Some of the other laws mentioned, like how there has to be a window makes sense, but this one doesn’t really seem to. I can see why this law would be good, like to prevent too many people from living together in unsafe conditions, but if the place is large enough, it should be okay for more than three unrelated adults to live together. This is especially true seeing how much everything costs and how high rent is in the city.

The tour guide mentioned that the projected population in New York City in 2030 is close to 9 million, which is kind of scary to think about. I read an article a few weeks about how some people in Hong Kong have to live in cages and cubicle apartments because they just can’t afford anything else. I know this is really extreme, and probably won’t happen here, but it makes me wonder what will happen if the population keeps on growing like it’s projected to and if there’s isn’t enough housing. Rent keeps on increasing and affordable housing isn’t always really affordable. I know that Bloomberg put in a plan a few years ago to create more affordable plan, and there is the new micro apartment plan, but I wonder how successful the plans will be.

The micro apartment shown in the museum was really cool and fun to look at. It seems like a really great idea, and it shows that a person doesn’t need 400 square feet to be able to live comfortably. Everything in the apartment took up as little space as possible and the whole thing was just really resourceful and creative. What remains to be seen is how successful it’ll be. The price is probably the biggest hurdle and whether or not people can actually afford to live there and feel like it’s worth it. Although it is resourceful, with the little space to move around, people might not think it’s worth the rent.

Our visit to the Museum of the City of New York was both a very exciting and educational experience. The Making Room exhibit demonstrated the housing situation in New York City and conveyed how housing could be made cheaper and more easily accessible for New Yorkers. It showed us how one can maximize each square foot of his apartment to change a tiny apartment into a beautiful home with a den area, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. It demonstrated how New York City can look to the future by focusing on the increasing population of people looking for cheap one-bedroom apartments.

As I entered the exhibit, the first thing that surprised me was the fact that 33% of all New York City residents live alone. I believe that the museum did an excellent job in portraying how large of a percentage 33% really is by displaying it in block formation as compared to the other types of housing situations. I was surprised to find that living alone was the primary choice of housing due to 2 things. Firstly, as Alice mentioned, growing up in Brooklyn, outside of Manhattan, I never really encountered anyone who lived alone. I believe that like myself everyone lived with either a roommate or with siblings. I believed that the percentage of people living with family or with a roommate would be much greater. Secondly, due to the fact that only 1.5% of apartments are one-bedroom apartments I found it hard to believe that 33% of New Yorkers lived alone.

After viewing the percentages of housing situations we moved on to the restrictions that are placed upon residential developers, particularly related to the size of apartments and the amount of space that the building could take up on the lot. For instance, one restriction provided that each apartment must be at least 400 square feet and another stated that you could only cover a certain percentage of the lot. In my opinion, these restrictions were wasteful and inefficient. Especially in a location with as many people as New York, I believed that we should make efforts to maximize the amount of building area instead of minimizing it. We should try to build as many units as we can to account for the growing population. I also found it unfair that people would have to pay for 400 square feet, when in reality they would only need 300 square feet..

The portion of the exhibit which i enjoyed the most was the model apartment. It truly demonstrated the meaning of maximizing the potential of space. They fit everything needed in an entire house in an area of 325 square feet. Wherever, you looked there for places that could provide for extra storage. For instance, there were many shelves around the apartment and the television can be pushed aside for extra shelving. The kitchen was the greatest part of all, because it had all of the appliances of a regular kitchen, except in half the space. When I walked out of that apartment I honestly said to myself that I would want to live there.

The exhibit clearly demonstrated the housing trends of New York city and what must be done in order to accommodate the growing population of New York City. Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to create many affordable units sounds like a very viable plan and in my opinion can be extremely successful. I was able to learn many things about the past and future of New York city through this exhibit and it changed my view concerning New York City housing.

Visiting the Museum of the City of New York and learning about the housing situation in New York as compared to other places was an eye opening experience. Housing in New York, as many of us may know, is difficult. With all these new methods of saving space and creating apartments for single people instead of single-family, New York City is not only catching up to the current population trend but also considering the future.

My favorite part of the exhibit was looking at the architectural mini models that won contests. I have actually seen small models of buildings before; however, the model as a whole was for a large area of land where a private community was to be built in China. The model was very colorful and realistic looking, but what caught my attention was that it looked “fancy.” Since I do not plan on immigrating to China, dreaming of such a community would not work out for me. So when I saw these models and their unique designs, I was immediately drawn in.

Another part of the exhibit I enjoyed was the apartment floor model. When the guide was showing us all the space saving objects, such as the pull down bed, I felt like a little girl in a doll house. I have seen many space saving gadgets on the internet, but seeing them up close and watching how simple they work is even more amazing. When she went through the whole floor model, I felt convinced that my ideal “when I get a job and live by myself” home was an apartment like that.
When exploring other exhibits, I thought the world fair exhibit was intriguing as well. There were many object displayed from past world fairs, like the huge robot man that I found extremely creepy the longer I looked at it. Another object that caught my eye was the toaster and coffee pot. Being able to compare old inventions of a toaster and coffee pot allowed me to really feel the technological advancement of the present. Since I grew up in a generation where technology was rapidly developing, technology feels “normal” to me. So being able to see up close something from the past was a nice experience. Overall, I really enjoyed the trip to the Museum of the City of New York. There were many fascinating displays, and I think others should look at the World’s Fair exhibit. Also, the museum guide was extremely passionate and made the housing exhibit very intriguing.

The trip to the Museum of the City of New York was very interesting and allowed me to see many elements of the future of New York that I had not considered, notably the evolution of housing. The museum tour brought up many statistics and details about the city that were surprising yet intuitive and displayed some great models showing modern housing units. The museum mainly addressed the need for housing to correspond to the types of people using the housing. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, a lot of the houses are very similar and are usually 3 floors with a family on each floor, and not flexible to other occupants. Because of the large amount of people living alone, new housing needs to reflect these living trends.

I was most surprised to find that the percentage of two unrelated adults living together, or roommates, in New York City was only 6%. I expected this number to be a lot higher since many people I know live with roommates but as the tour guide suggested, this number only takes into account the reported instances. There may be a larger percentage of people who do live together as roommates but do not report this. I was also unaware of the large number of people living alone; about 33%. It makes sense that almost a third of New York lives alone but growing up in Brooklyn, I mainly encountered people living with families in houses or apartments. I always thought most people lived by themselves in Manhattan, which is often the case, yet it was surprising that single households make up such a large proportion of the population when there are so many larger homes in Staten Island and Brooklyn.

The housing laws seem to be taken flippantly by many. Even the guide mentioned that she had lived in a place that didn’t meet housing law standards of space. The small living units being built currently that are displayed in the museum don’t even correspond to housing regulations about size but the guide said that occupants only have to sign a waiver to live in them. Even though it was very small, the living unit was rather amazing. Everything in the room was very functional and most items served a double purpose, such as a chair folding out to a ladder and a bed coming out of the wall.

The small models of various housing designs were also very interesting. I enjoyed how each architect used space in a very unique way. Many of the apartments in the buildings took up one floor and were the same size yet each floor was designed differently with a smart use of the limited space. The models depicted elevated half-floors, for example, with elevated parts of the floor holding the bedroom and using the space underneath for another room. They seemed efficient as well as comfortable and modern. The designs including a shared living space were also interesting because it allowed people to have their own rooms and bathrooms yet share areas for social activities.

As some people have already brought up, even with ideal housing units that optimize space, there is still the issue of parking and where to place cars. With housing that can hold many people, there also needs to be a garage area, perhaps underground to hold the many cars that people drive. I believe the tour guide mentioned at one point that people in Manhattan do not drive cars, but that is not always the case. There is always a proportion of the population who drives and they need convenient places to park.

While unfortunately I was sick with flu like symptoms the day the class went as a whole to the Museum of the City of New York, I was lucky enough to make an independent trip to the museum myself. I have to say that I was thoroughly impressed with entire museum. Generelly speaking, I felt that the authentic of the place was quite authentic, and the layout was conducive to understanding the structure of the city, and the cumulative living spaces where New Yorkers live.

I though the museum did a particularly good job conveying the demographics of New York through helpful uses of statistic. It was quite interesting learning the single/married makeup of the city, and particularly where these people generally live. What struck me was how often similar people with similar means and/or backgrounds tend to live near each This might make for a great social commentary on people in generally, and the organic, natural way a community slowly takes shape.

I felt the museum did a particular good job of balancing both the past, present, and future of New York City, giving the entirety of the exhibitions a very visceral feel. I was shocked at how current the exhibitions were, giving a detailed analysis of events taking place as we speak, such as the propositions of current mayor Michael Bloomberg. It was very learning about different initiatives of the mayor, specifically the new apartment development supposed to be built near Baruch.

Once again, the museum did a great job of metaphorically opening a window and previewing the lives of New Yorkers. It both illustrated what unites and New York but also pointed out the differences we share. In its comparison of the different Boroughs of New York, the museum segmented the Boroughs and showcased the physical differences between them. As expected, Manhattan encompasses more high rises and apartments, and outer boroughs such as Staten Island and Queens seemed more accommodating to traditional families. It was interesting to see the layout of the Bronx and to learn more about this borough which personally is still very much unfamiliar.

I was definitely wowed by the museum’s “The Future of New York City.” Getting a glimpse of the future is always an interesting endeavor, but the museum took this initiative to new heights. The museum’s model for the future is one where residential uniformity is not a necessity. The exhibited showcased apartments and living spaces which defied the convention norms. Architectural efficiency was certainly a main theme, as was building which seemed more integrated which their environments. In fact, getting more with less seems to be the defining value that both architects and engineers are geared on. In all, the museum was a fantastic experience, one I hope to repeat.