THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY:

Redesigning Robert Moses: Three new views of the controversial urban planner (Howard Kissel, 2/19/07, NY Daily News)
A few years ago, taking relatives on a walking tour of the West Village, I was struck by how many playgrounds there were. Mentioning it to a friend, I was surprised to learn they were created by Robert Moses.

Until that moment, like many New Yorkers, I had thought of Moses as The Great Satan.

I viewed him through the prism of Jane Jacobs, the author of 1961's seminal "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Jacobs' idea of the city - based on streets that mixed residential and commercial uses, all on a human scale - was the direct opposite of his.

He was the proponent of huge apartment complexes with large expanses of grass between them - which, Jacobs correctly observed, remained largely unused.

He was the man who destroyed the South Bronx and many Manhattan neighborhoods to accommodate the automobile. [...]

Why is there this sudden desire to reevaluate Moses?

"New York was at its nadir in the early '70s when Caro wrote his book," Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the QMA, explains. "It was almost as if people thought, 'Who can we blame for this?'

"Now that the city has made a remarkable turnaround, it's as if people want to ask, 'Who made this possible?' The answer, again, is Robert Moses."

Finkelpearl notes that Caro was so intent on demonstrating Moses' power that he minimized his defeats, notably the community effort that derailed his attempt to build a four-lane highway through Washington Square.
It could have been worse is always a desperation defense.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 19, 2007 10:22 AM