The mind is an incredibly powerful tool, though virtually useless if one doesn’t apply their thoughts to the real world. Robert Moses gazed over a wasteland once referred to as Riverside Park, and foresaw an elaborate parkway system running through it. Robert Moses took these visions and applied them to the real world, greatly contributing to the current shape of New York City. While many praised his ideas and accomplishments, many regard him with resentment for the unethical methods used to create his visions. While there is no refuting the fact that displacing so many poor workers and African Americans was unreasonable and harsh, we must look at how far we’ve come because of the improvements bestowed upon the city. We don’t need nor want another Robert Moses in the current day, but we must recognize his amazing contributions to the city. Robert Moses had the “magic” to push through one of the roughest times in NYC’s history (The Great Depression) and pull off such amazing feats.
NYC was in a rough spot during the early 20th century. It was filled with half-built skyscrapers and closing factories. Parents could barely afford their normal standard of food, and slowly started skimping out on meals. The population was increasingly dramatically, and the per capita cost of the budget increasing by a whopping 200%. Parks weren’t in the greatest of conditions and became a haven for drunks. The walkways for citizens of the city were nothing but broken pavement. This didn’t stop Moses however, and starting with the completion of his first major project in 1929, the ball kept rolling, and Moses continued to progress and succeed.
With the population rising, what was to be done? Most of the roads at this time were still built for horse-driven carriages as opposed to automobiles. With an increasing population, we’d see an increasing amount of cars out for travel. Not only did we need an efficient way to house incoming New Yorkers, but an efficient system of travel was needed as well, which Moses introduced via constructing new homes and building highways.
In an article written by the New York Times, “Rehabilitating Robert Moses,” Robin Pogrebin discusses the good and bad to Moses’ approach to construction in the city. He refers to Robert Moses as “the bulldozing bully who callously displaced thousands of New Yorkers in the name of urban renewal.” Do we focus too much on those who Robert Moses victimize as opposed to what he actually accomplished? Hillary Ballon of Columbia University believes this to be true, and continues to states that “if it were not for Moses’ public infrastructure…New York might not have been able to recover from the blight and flight of the 1970s and ‘80s and become he economic magnet that it is today.” And it is true; New York had more productions of urban renewal that all other cities in America combined. 29 states didn’t have a single state park in the 1920s, yet Moses was able to have one finished in1929. One man had the power to advance one state above all of the others combined – what exactly does that say?
Robert Moses did tremendous things to advance New York, but we simply cannot ignore the things he did to people to accomplish such feats. “Rehabilitating Robert Moses” explains how the creation of some parkways paved way for new slums to be created, as the people Moses evicted had no place to go. Ms. Ballon explains that “he was perfectly positioned to recognized how any one thing had multiple consequences…yet he purposely chose to ignore these things.” He threw out over 250,000 people from their homes. It’s one thing to be ignorant of consequences, but Moses was fully aware and still went on with his projects. Does this represent his drive for improving the city for the public? After all, with the execution of 17 different urban renewal projects within a span of 9 years, Robert Moses took things incredibly seriously. Is this a worthwhile implementation of eminent domain? Most people would probably say yes.
With the creation of hundreds of playgrounds and miles of parkway, it’s fair to say that New York would be nowhere near as efficient and effective as it is today. You have to lose some to win some, and while Moses didn’t do everything in a moral manner, he did what was needed to be done to transform NYC into the powerhouse it is today. His successes in modernizing and revolutionizing the city still effect us to this day, showing just how important his contributions to the city were.
WORKS CITIED
Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf, 1974. 5-21, 323-346. Print.
Pogrebin, Robin. “Rehabilitating Robert Moses.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Jan. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/arts/design/28pogr.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Nik, I agree with you on all counts. I see that you included in your post that Robert Moses should be lauded for his amazing successes in reshaping New York City and allowing for the rapid urbanization of its infrastructure, while also keeping in mind that his actions did affect the lives of many in negative ways.
I think Robert Moses was a man of great accomplishments, but as your New York Times source had cited from Caro;
“He cited the ouster of more than half a million people from their homes in the Bronx, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in Sunset Park in Brooklyn and on Long Island farms for the sake of new highways or ‘slum clearance’: evictions that largely could have been avoided by using alternate routes and that in some cases helped create new slums.
‘His highways and bridges and tunnels are awesome all right, but no aspect of those highways and bridges and tunnels is as awesome as the congestion on them,’ Mr. Caro said. ‘Congestion was always going to be inevitable in New York, but it could have been substantially less had he only combined his roads with the mass transit suggested by so many planners.’”
From this block quote we can gather than while Robert Mose brought results to New York City he did not do it unopposed. In fact, this comment on his actions lends support to the argument that Moses could have avoided the repositioning of hundreds of thousands of New York City inhabitants. His plans for restructuring the city in a way that was beneficial for urbanization became reality at the expense of people being uprooted from their neighborhoods and being moved into slums across the city. While Caro does mention that during the depression Moses’ projects employed up to 84,000 workers, it does not make up for the 250,000 his plans relocated to poor areas.
Nik, you present a handful of evidence to support your claims about the difficulty in gauging the morality of a great man’s efforts. Robert Moses left an indelible mark on the physical structure of New York City while also leaving behind a legacy that is blemished, some would say, by the sacrificing of many people’s homes to make way for a “better city”. New York City would not be what it is today without Robert Moses’ genius urban planning capabilities and his affinity for looking to the future. We are in debt to this man for this great city; however, we can learn from his mistakes to ensure that when infrastructure is being added to or changed that we remember that in the end it is for the benefit of the city as a whole.