Robert Moses has become one of the most disputed figures in the history of the development New York City. The primary reason for all the controversy is that Moses acted in a quasi-totalitarian way within a culture that values democracy and fair debate on major issues, such as city planning. While the critiques of Moses’ projects, especially those that disproportionately displaced poor people and minorities, are perfectly understandable, there is something to be said about the productivity of a strong central leader. There are almost no plans or ideas that do not face criticism from some group or individual, and according to our democratic values, it would be wrong to go forward with a project that does not have unanimous approval or significant compromises. With that said, it is incredibly difficult to make much of anything significant happen without somehow disobeying our ideals. Robert Moses’ complete disregard for this system was what enabled him to make the changes in New York City’s infrastructure that helped the city become what it is today.
Putting this in the most polite way possible – people are often overly sensitive towards issues that will become completely irrelevant within a few generations. For example, an issue I alluded to in my last post: If Robert Moses had been able to construct a highway through Mid-Town in the 1960s, people living in New York City in 2015 would probably not continue to think of it as something that ruined the essence of the city. More realistically, it would register in most people’s minds as simply a highway they commute on. A real world example of this is Lincoln Center. The ethics of clearing a Puerto Rican slum to create Lincoln Center were debated while the project was being conceived, but 50 years later, Lincoln Center is understood to be a Mecca of culture – a very good thing. This logic can even be applied to Moses’ most controversial project – the Cross Bronx Expressway. There will always be scholars who will argue that a terrible thing was done during the creation of the project, but it will likely never become a popular enough debate to register in mainstream consciousness. People don’t really think about it much, and I would imagine that a survey would reveal that most Bronx residents today find the highway useful. I don’t mean to advocate ignorance – I see it instead as adaptivity. For example, the Long Island Expressway runs directly through my neighborhood. I was born in 1995, years and years after the creation of the highway, and while my great-grandparents who bought this house may have been concerned, I have never once in my life thought about that highway in a negative light. I grew up with it there, I use it every day, and it is part of the Flushing that I know.
As we figured out in class last week, there really is no answer for what the greater good is. However, if a project can be proven practical and valuable, my stance is that New Yorkers will adapt and eventually benefit, even if it is detrimental to certain people in the moment. There are no perfect plans and somebody will always get the short end of the stick, but perhaps our scope in assessing these things is too narrow.
Nick, you bring a lot of excellent points to the table in your post. I think there’s a tendency for people to put down their counterparts in an effort to raise themselves up. That’s why, a lot of the time, people will focus in on the bad aspects of someone’s character, even if those qualities don’t begin to sum up a person’s whole character. And most of the time, those negative qualities are just a minor part of that person, and generally they contribute positive things to the world. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that Robert Moses was a flawless character, he wasn’t. He was demanding and power hungry. But those traits are partially what allowed him to be so influential, and contribute so much to the city we know and love.
When reading about the the contributions that Robert Moses made to New York City, it sounds almost like a Dos Equis commercial. With one exception, Robert Moses built every one of the major roads on which cars and trucks drive. He brought the city’s playground total from 119 to 777. There pretty much was no architectural changes in the entire city that occurred without his approval. He very well might have been the most interesting man in New York City’s history, but he undoubtedly was the most impactful from an architectural standpoint.
What it comes down to is that every decision that is made to change a city is met with people who benefit from that decision and people who are harmed by it. Therefore, it is a city planner’s job to try to benefit as many people as possible with each change that occurs. With that said, New York is even tougher to deal with in terms of change because of the sheer number of people that are affected by each decision, and the massive variation from family to family in terms of their background and social class. So Robert Moses had a very challenging job, and believed that the projects he approved would be beneficial to New York City. The fact that you can’t drive in the city for more than ten minutes without seeing one of his projects, shows how important he was to the history of New York City, and allowing it to remain one of the major cities in the world. Additionally, the fact that these projects have remained as major parts of the city’s landscape speak for his continued importance even almost 50 years after he has left his position.
At the end of the day, it’s important to know about Moses’s controversial personality but it’s just as important not to overlook the contributions he made to New York City. In Ballon and Jackson’s introduction, they say that: “Moses was a builder, and it’s important to focus on what he built. His powerful personality tends to draw people away from the structures themselves, but in the end they are what shaped New York City and continue to sustain it”. When discussing historical figures, we need to be open minded, and focus on the merits of that person’s quality as well as his faults.
What I found most interesting in the reading and looking at your blog post was the pragmatism that supposedly backed up most of Moses’s plans. Allegedly all that Moses did was for this colloquial “greater good” (something which we’ve all had a hard time defining, although I like to think of it as being good for more people than not). His plans were to create a more pragmatic, improved city (or at least that’s what he consistently asserted).
When you delve more into it, like you have, it’s really interesting to note how much of this improvement is looked at as improvement simply because of adaptation (and a retrospective positivity associated with the projects) and how many of the changes were actually improving the city. Again just as you were saying about people perceiving things to “ruin the essence of the city”, there will always be people hesitant to change their city for aesthetic and sentimental reasons. Similarly today, if someone suggested creating a new street that would run through Central Park, people would be averse to such a change even though it could make commuting more convenient.
But, where I disagree with you is that these issues become “completely irrelevant within a few generations.” For me, it doesn’t matter if nobody today really views the expressways and highways created in a strictly negative light. They still could have ruined the essence of what the city was and could have been today. Just because people adapt to negative changes, doesn’t mean that they weren’t negative changes. I’m not saying that the changes were inherently negative or not – just commenting that the negativity (even if citizens eventually adapt to the changes) can affect later generations. Whether Robert Moses “ruined” parts of the city or “created” the city is still up for debate, but I don’t think just because people will adapt, these changes can be viewed as inconsequential for later generations. The “essence of the city” lost through these projects would have been influential on later generations, as well.