As a child, I would make my way from Staten Island to Manhattan only when absolutely necessary. I did not know much about the city, but I always pictured the glitz and glam of Broadway, the expensive shops down 5^th Avenue, the yellow taxicabs and the occasional celebrity. As I grew up, my father would tell me stories of New York City in the 1970s – a place very different from what I always imagined.

Now that I commute to Baruch everyday, I have gotten to know various neighborhoods a little better. I know to be careful (as is the case wherever I go) and always heed my father’s advice: keep your eyes open. However, I enjoy reading works about New York City’s history because it allows me to form a better understanding of the past, present and possibly even the future.

For starters, Kenneth T. Jackson’s stark description of post World War II cities as “dispiriting collections of broken bottles, broken windows, and broken lives” is quite intense. As a 21^st century New Yorker, it is difficult to imagine the city ever being so inhospitable. It makes sense that a loss of manufacturing jobs after WWII would harm the economy of a city, but I would have never imagined just how badly. Large masses of people chose to leave the cheerless city and neighborhoods such as the South Bronx housed the perfect storm of poverty, race and crime. It almost seemed as if New York had spiraled too far into bleakness, until Robert Moses came along.

Robert Moses undoubtedly had an immense impact on the city as we know it. He has gone down in history as one of the most well-known urban planners, but not without criticism. It was interesting reading Ballon’s and Jackson’s interpretations of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. As Ballon points out, Caro published The Power Broker when the city was rapidly declining, thus making it easy to associate the deterioration with Moses’ work. The fact of the matter is that Moses led the nation’s largest slum clearance program in the 1950s, allowing the city to adjust to changing demands. Fifty years later, as Ballon states, “the Moses projects have been absorbed into the fabric of the city.” From massive public works programs to the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, Moses was a forward-looking planner who was able to effectively allocate resources. Racist or not, he delivered.

It is interesting to note how things have come full circle. Prior to the 1950s, New York was the “unchallenged center of American life” (Jackson). For over a decade, Gotham had sharply declined and was unable to recover until 1975 when a “renaissance” returned it to its former glory. Aside from criticisms about being money hungry, prejudice or callous, Robert Moses truly had a lasting impact on New York City. Having built 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, 658 playgrounds, and 150,000 housing units, he spent $150 billion in today’s dollars. Moses can justifiably go down in history as a catalyst of change, having profoundly transformed New York’s infrastructural landscape.

Everything I’ve ever read about Robert Moses gives me conflicting views of him. He’s often described as a power-hungry man with no regard for community, yet he’s also praised for all the revolutionary contributions he made to New York City. In my opinion, Robert Moses was not a bad man in regards to his work across the city. His primary goal was to serve the public, which he successfully did. People might argue that he had absolutely no regard for the cultural hubs and small neighborhoods that make New York so unique, but he had visions of urban planning for maximum efficiency. In the grand scheme of things, that seems much more important. The culture will emerge regardless, so it’s better to focus on bringing the city to its full potential.

I can see that Moses may have abused his power, but all anyone really cares about is the outcome. The bottom line is that he was able to get these projects done. As most New Yorkers know, public projects can take years discuss and plan, let alone to complete. Moses came up with an idea and effectively executed it. That alone is impressive. The simple fact that he made progress is enough to make me overlook any sketchy deals he may have made, which were probably nothing compared to any little plot our politicians might pull today.

On the other hand, no project could ever fully justify evicting people from their homes. There’s probably an argument about the greater good, but all of Moses’s creations were doing absolutely no good to the thousands of people who had nowhere to live. This is probably why Moses has such a wobbly reputation; the cons outweighed the pros, which eventually led to people forgetting about the good things and only remembering the bad. His work was undoubtedly great for New York City, but it might not have been worth sacrificing the homes of thousands of people. Although, everything worked out in the end, so I still think relatively high of him.

Moses is especially known for his highways, but another one of his ideas caught my attention: “little shelters, for instance, in Central Park, so that mothers could change their babies’ diapers without having to go all the way home,” (4). I think that would be a great initiative, and it made me think about restrooms in general. I have always wondered why there are no public restrooms in New York City. This is a place full of commuters, tourists, and people who are constantly away from home, but there are no facilities for them to utilize while in transit. When I visited Hong Kong—another large city—almost ten years ago, there were public bathrooms that proved to be extremely useful for pedestrians. At the very least, some portable bathrooms would be nice.

The closing of the “The Power Broker” introduction brings up an interesting point about Moses. I can’t even imagine what New York City would look like now had he never lived. Would somebody else have come up with the idea for highways and public parks? If yes, how would theirs have differed from Moses’s? Would Jane Jacobs’s tight-knit communities have prevailed? It’s difficult to think of a New York City that’s different from the one I know. As far as I can tell, it’s working out pretty well the way it is. I can’t think of ways to make it more efficient, so I wonder if we’d have ever gotten this far without Moses. Moreover, where would we be without him?