New York City Highways- Robert Moses

One of the most polarizing and controversial figures in American history is urban planner Robert Moses. Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his book Managing with Power, notes that Moses was included in Life magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the twentieth century, along with Roosevelt, Churchill, Gandhi, and Einstein (83). Pfeffer states, "I suspect that if I asked you to choose a position in which you could wield enormous power, you would probably not pick the job of parks commissioner...but Robert Moses was arguably the most powerful public official in the United States during the twentieth century" (83). During his 44-year career, Moses built "12 bridges, 35 highways, 751 playgrounds, 13 golf courses, 18 swimming pools, and more than two million acres of parks in New York" (Pfeffer 83). Among the public structures he built were the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Nations Headquarters, and Shea Stadium. Of the many bridges and tunnels were the Triborough Bridge and Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The roads included the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway, and the beaches included Coney Island, Rockaway, and Jones Beach (Pfeffer 84).

Like other powerful figures of his day, Moses "realized that various kinds of resources, including allies, are vitally important as sources of power" (83). Moses accomplished as much as he did in part because of his ability to leverage local government resources and influence. Pfeffer group

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ers as Long Island state park commissioner" and set the bills up to be passed by having them introduced by "a young, na�ve legislator" just before the session was to end (238). According to Pfeffer, "There was no debate and they passed unanimously, with the representatives only later discovering the effects of what they had done in such haste" (238). Moses' prowess in making things happen is lauded by Thomas M. Downs, the current president of the New York Transit Authority, who states, "What I envy about Moses is his ability to get things done" (Dunlap). Like many of Moses' other detractors, however, Downs tempers that praise with a belief that "the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Cross Bronx Expressway, both Moses projects, destroyed the areas through which they were run" and an acknowledgment that Moses' work must have created suffering in the city and its neighborhoods (Dunlap). Downs comments that "the reaction to his overwhelming, ego-building, bulldozing approach" has in some respects been taken "to the extreme," giving "a veto to so many places in the process that it's extraordinarily difficult to build or rebuild," and he attributes this result to "Moses not grounding himself in sensitivity to people and

Category: History - N