Last fall an architect friend of mine recommended that I read The Power Broker by Robert Caro. The book, published in 1974, is a biography of Robert Moses, the man whose 30+ year career was spent shaping the urban and suburban landscape of New York and whose philosophy inspired much of the automobile centered development around the country (as perhaps, around the world). The book serves as a case study of the New York region demonstrating how the hell we got to the point where car ownership is a need rather than a luxury for so many of us.
I tried to buy this as an eBook, which I do when possible to save paper, money, and storage space in my home, but it was not available digitally, so I settled for having it held at my local Barnes and Noble. When I went to pick it up, the cashier dramatically dropped this 1,246 page paper cinderblock on the counter with a resounding thud, raised one eyebrow at me, and asked “Are you sure?” Gulp.
I took my sweet time reading this book. It’s a dense and interesting read, and not something I wanted to tear through. Parts of it left me so incensed that I would have to put the book aside for a week or two to digest what I had just read. I finally finished it a few weeks ago, and it has changed my perspective on the built world around me and the industry in which I work.
As a planner, a mother, a pedestrian, and a bike-lover, I have concluded that Robert Moses was a bad influence. He was an egocentric, power-hungry, self-absorbed, and cruel force that swept through New York laying acres and acres of asphalt and dooming an entire region to dependency on the automobile. Moses was known for Getting Things Done because he managed to accomplish so much so quickly, but many of the things he did, especially with regard to transit and housing, left permanent scars on my region. He did built magnificent bridges and planned some stunning parks, especially in his earlier years, but he was also vehemently opposed to mass transit, so he took deliberate steps to make future construction of mass transit facilities difficult, and disliked providing services and facilities for the urban poor, so the many parks he built were intentionally inaccessible to them.
Moses was not an independently wealthy dictator who managed to force his will on an unwilling public all by himself. He had the full support of powerful bankers and builders, and what he built was with their help. The press also helped by crafting a false image of Moses as a selfless, flawless public servant–there was a complete failure by the press for decades to question his motives and claims, follow through on the actual impact of his works, or investigate his business practices until well after the damage had been done.
Moses was greatly concerned with building a legacy, but he was too short-sighted to see that the legacy he left would include not only some parks bearing his name, but also soul-crushing daily commutes, dependency on foreign oil to fuel the now-necessary cars, a regional landscape that makes the construction of effective mass transit facilities prohibitively expensive, and a pattern of sprawl that is detrimental to the health and mental well-being of the public he claimed to serve.
It’s a damn shame that Mr. Moses had not taken an interest in building a world-class mass transit system for New York City. I have no doubt that it would have been the most magnificent in the world. If he had cared for hospitals, or schools, or any of a dozen other vital systems that built a strong community…but he didn’t. What he really cared about was power, and there was no power to be had in building subways, public schools, and hospitals. He was not motivated by a pure love of building great things for the public, but rather by a great need to build himself up.
