The Battle For Gotham Part 6

With the defeat of the expressway and gradual occupancy by artists, the transformation of SoHo had begun. City planning, zoning, and land-marking policies just had to catch up.

Not one dime of public investment or developer subsidy made SoHo happen. In fact, the defeat of a big misplanned public investment made SoHo possible. Only in the defeat of the highway did urbanism have a chance. Only in the defeat of excessive, top-down plans did SoHo have a chance. After the defeat, spontaneous regeneration took hold. Individual creativity rescued the beleaguered district planners sought to raze. When not doomed by centrally planned, inappropriate projects, many urban and small-town districts can regenerate productively.

JANE JACOBS VERSUS ROBERT MOSES.

This pattern of planned urban destruction parading as renewal, set by Moses and his disciples, led to the sprawling, dysfunctional landscape with which the country now wrestles. Jacobs was Moses's most vigorous and visible opponent.

Jacobs argued that the unplanned mix of uses is what const.i.tutes a healthy urban district and sustains a viable urban economy. Her concept of mixed use is defined here with the complex combination of industrial, commercial, residential, and cultural uses. Additionally, and quite importantly, a mix of building ages and scale is present. Districts like this, she argued, were more valuable to a city's economy than highways. Their value was underappreciated, she believed. Such a sensible and observable reality was heresy when Death and Life Death and Life was published in 1961. She contradicted what the profession of planning was about and threatened power centers everywhere. was published in 1961. She contradicted what the profession of planning was about and threatened power centers everywhere.6 The "sacking of cities" is how she labeled what was happening at the time. This adds significance to the expressway defeat, a significance that reaches well beyond even the rescue and regeneration of SoHo. Urban districts should not be sacrificed for expensive, wasteful, destructive clearance projects, she argued. The "sacking of cities" is how she labeled what was happening at the time. This adds significance to the expressway defeat, a significance that reaches well beyond even the rescue and regeneration of SoHo. Urban districts should not be sacrificed for expensive, wasteful, destructive clearance projects, she argued.

SoHo was the biggest and most obvious battleground of the Moses-Jacobs urban philosophies that first unfolded in Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park. Gra.s.sroots battles against similar wrongheaded plans increased exponentially across the United States, especially highway urban renewal plans, inspired by Jacobs's words and activism. Community-based planning, historic preservation, and the "recycling" of buildings triumphed. Other neighborhoods and cities followed the pattern, stalling the bulldozers of urban renewal and highways in many places.

The lines were drawn dramatically in SoHo. This was a widely publicized and significant gra.s.sroots victory over top-down, autocratic planning. The reverberations had national impacts: Other groups were energized to fight harder if they were already embattled or to begin to do so if they weren't.

There were other community leaders around the country leading local fights against highways through cities, as Jane Jacobs did in SoHo. None gained the attention she did, being in the media capital of the country. Until then, only government officials and business leaders made decisions. They usually didn't live in the community and knew nothing of its vitality. If it was old, they just declared it a slum.

Before its designation for a highway, SoHo performed the age-old function of a healthy urban neighborhood that provides an outlet for innovation, gives birth to new businesses, permits established businesses to grow and adapt, adds new substance to the local economy, and exports its people and innovations to the rest of the city and country. "A lot more work than you imagine is occurring in SoHo," Jacobs observed in a 1981 conversation, "especially in artists' studios. Art is work, a very important work for cities, a very important export. Also, a lot of the services to this work, suppliers of various kinds, are there too. This is one of the few up-and-coming areas of New York. There ought to be forty to fifty neighborhoods like that."

SoHo's revival demonstrated that the spontaneous generation that once characterized New York's growth was still possible. In fact, this revival was happening during the 1970s when the economic condition of the city as a whole could not have been bleaker. The impact of SoHo on the larger city of New York is endless. SoHo changed the way we view all cities.

SOHO BROADENED THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION MOVEMENT.

Preservationists have long been in the vanguard of opposition to inappropriate change, since historically or culturally important resources are often in the way of misguided plans. Incorrectly, preservationists are often accused of being against all change and for freezing the city. In fact, they oppose the erasure, mutilation, and overwhelming of places of value.

The highway defeat gave heart to urbanists, community defenders, progressive planners, and all other opponents of invasive projects mislabeled as "progress." Thus, SoHo helped slow the automobile-focused development nationwide that has destroyed so many viable neighborhoods, architectural treasures, and cultural resources.

SoHo survived the worst kind of planned impediments and then flourished under strict government limitations imposed first by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and then the City Planning Commission. Basic rules and regulations have protected the area from excessive and overwhelming change, not from change itself. SoHo buildings are being constantly altered by what Jacobs called "adaptations, ameliorations, and densifications," and new Modernist buildings are replacing nonhistoric structures and filling empty sites. In fact, because SoHo was so successful, it attracted a parade of upscale, innovative contemporary buildings, designed by big-name architects (Jean Nouvel, Gwathmy Siegel, Smith Hawkinson), all enthusiastically approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in recent years.

These are the kind of rules that permit, even encourage, change within the context of what already exists. The integrity, scale, and individuality of scores of distinct neighborhoods are similarly protected by historic district designation. SoHo's transformation after the expressway defeat defines productive change: New is added to old; some pieces are replaced, but new does not overwhelm the whole. Some old is renovated and updated for new uses. The layering process of history is continued, not interrupted. Most dramatically, the SoHo Syndrome has done more to retain the middle cla.s.s in cities and stimulate new economic innovations than any planning or government-supported new development.7 Discouragements to conventional development fundamentally helped SoHo's spontaneous metamorphosis. The restrictions were precisely what prevented wholesale alteration of the district, prevented a different development agenda from overwhelming it, and gave it the value property owners enjoy today.

Citizen activists stood ready to defend SoHo turf each step of the way. They lost few battles. No public funding, tax incentives, or zoning bonuses were necessary. The conventionalists who once decried the messy mixture of urban uses in gritty districts now celebrated the "mixed use" that SoHo epitomized.

Conventional economists, Wall Streeters, planners, and city officials undervalue these microeconomies that feed, sustain, and expand the larger city economy, the way the city's economy functioned in its most robust eras. These are the areas where new work is added to old, the kind of new work that authentically grows an urban economy. In recent boom years, misguided upzoning plans have been the constant threat to the continuation and expansion of these microeconomies. The frontiers within the city to which this dynamic energy can move are fewer and fewer due to a wave of upzoning, excessive development schemes, and escalating real estate values. Too many of these people and activities are simply being pushed out of the city limits.

What has happened in recent years can't be called modest anymore. In some ways, this has been a function of a national economy affecting every New York neighborhood and most American cities. What will happen now that this overheated cycle has cooled dramatically is anyone's guess. But only one thing is sure. The variety and flexibility of SoHo's building stock are in a good position to weather future dramatic s.h.i.+fts. The urban constant of change will continue to reshape SoHo and every other neighborhood.

SOHO'S EXPORTS HELP REJUVENATE OTHER PLACES Change is a constant in SoHo. As it exported its innovations and innovators, new things have taken their place. The complaint today is that SoHo is losing its character as an arts district. As prices escalate, galleries and artists leave, chain stores and restaurants move in, and tourists increase in numbers. This is especially dramatic in the era of a weak dollar, making New York City a foreign shopper's dream. Fortunately, the City Planning Commission followed the lead of a few dissenting commissioners and resisted an attempt in the 1990s to permit larger retail stores that would have accelerated that change and more dramatically undermined SoHo's artistic character and economic value. In this case, however, several fights ensued to prevent the Planning Commission from increasing parking. The protections in place for maintaining mixed use and manufacturing were constantly under attack. Over the years, however, manufacturing uses continued to diminish, but gradually, and conversions to residential continue today. Modest urban change, however, is both inevitable and most often healthy.

Nothing born or created in SoHo has been lost in the last decade of change. Whatever and whoever have left exist elsewhere. Chances are their art or business has expanded. The only losers, actually, are the residential or business renters outpriced by the market. Some of the artists and entrepreneurs who left did so in better condition than when they came. An artist friend of mine, for example, lives in a SoHo loft co-op. He was there fifteen years ago when it went co-op and bought cheap, as did other artists in the building. Several of his neighbors have sold their apartments, gaining financially, moving elsewhere to live more cheaply, using their financial gain productively, leaving town for greener pastures, or making other life changes of their choice.

Is this bad? It could be, if it weakens New York as a creative capital and if New York does not continue to regenerate and incubate new artists. But this incubation is, for the moment, still happening, very much so, in pockets all over the city. Some of the very people leaving SoHo and moving elsewhere are helping the process take hold in emerging SoHo-type districts in other cities. If anything, the recent economic freefall helps them stay. Landlords know better than to try to continue to raise rents excessively and, in fact, have lowered them in many places. Some areas are a convenient train ride or a short drive from the New York City marketplace. Isn't this what healthy urbanism is all about, the nurturing and exporting of innovations and innovative people? Both the incubating and the exporting must be happening at once, however, for the process to be a healthy one.

The piecing back together of the abused and undervalued manufacturing precincts like SoHo is happening across America. But the SoHo Syndrome doesn't work if a.s.sets are not there. The places where this process works have context, urban fabric, history, and committed citizens to make it work. It can't work where demolition is overwhelming. At that point, reproducing the urban fabric may be as alien as an enclosed shopping center. Replication is a trap. The result is form, not substance.

ONE LAST STAND ON A NEW YORK CITY CONTROVERSY.

Jacobs actually summed it up quite well in 2005, a year before she died. On my periodic Toronto visits, we always discussed what was going on in New York, and I reported to her the proposed zoning changes for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. This was a cla.s.sic gritty, mixed-use neighborhood in the real meaning of mixed use. Single-family homes, small apartment houses, tenements, and small local retailers were scattered among all manner of manufacturing and art and artisan uses, housed in former warehouses and manufacturing buildings. This neighborhood was a cla.s.sic incubator of new businesses of all kinds.

As gritty as it looked, Greenpoint-Williamsburg had been improving in recent years in a natural pattern of individualized upgraded uses (unslumming was the term Jacobs used in was the term Jacobs used in Death and Life Death and Life). It had become one of the new frontiers for artists and small or start-up manufacturers, as SoHo, Tribeca, and other Lower Manhattan districts became unaffordable. An overscaled rezoning that encouraged new high-rise, high-rent housing would undoubtedly undermine this robust economic and social process. And that was exactly what the city was proposing, without even a required percentage of units at affordable prices or any significant protection to keep industrial properties from conversion to residential. Incentives for developers to provide affordable units were included, but it meant letting them build even more units than permitted under the new zoning. In prior years, developers were required to include a minimum percentage with zoning bonuses only for an increase above the minimum.

4.3 Low-scale Greenpoint-Williamsburg was rezoned and overwhelming high-rises followed-stopped, temporarily only, by the economic collapse. Ron s.h.i.+ffman Ron s.h.i.+ffman.

4.4 New upscale towers raised real estate values throughout Greenpoint-Williamsburg, threatening affordable housing and industrial uses. Ron s.h.i.+ffman Ron s.h.i.+ffman.

Jacobs had seen this scenario unfold too many times, not just in New York. Hesitant to go public anymore on New York issues because of the flood of phone calls that usually followed, in April 2005 she agreed to write a letter in this case: Dear Mayor Bloomberg:My name is Jane Jacobs. I am a student of cities, interested in learning why some cities persist in prospering while others persistently decline; why some provide social environments that fulfill the dreams and hopes of ambitious and hardworking immigrants, but others cruelly disappoint the hopes of immigrant parents that they have found an improved life for their children. I am not now a resident of New York although most of what I know about cities I learned in New York during the almost half-century of my life here after I arrived as an immigrant from an impoverished Pennsylvania coal mining city in 1934.I am pleased and proud to say that dozens of cities, ranging in size from London to Riga in Latvia, have found the vibrant success and vitality of New York to demonstrate useful and helpful lessons for their cities and have realized that failures in New York are worth study as needed cautions.Let's think first about revitalization successes; they are great and good teachers. They don't result from gigantic plans and show-off projects, in New York or in other cities either. They build up gradually and authentically from diverse human communities; successful city revitalization builds itself on these authentic community foundations, as the community-devised 197-A plan does for Greenpoint.What the intelligently worked-out plan devised by the community itself does not do is worth noticing. It does not destroy hundreds of manufacturing jobs, desperately needed by New York citizens and by the city's stagnating and stunted manufacturing economy. The community's plan does not cheat the future by neglecting to provide for schools, daycare, recreational outdoor sports, and pleasant facilities for those things. The community's plan does not promote new housing at the expense of both existing housing and imaginative and economical new shelter that residents can afford. The community's plan does not violate the existing scale of the community, nor does it insult the visual and economic advantages of neighborhoods that are precisely of the kind that demonstrably attract artists and other live-work craftsmen, initiating spontaneous and self-organizing renewal. Indeed, so much renewal is happening so rapidly that the problem converts to how to make an undesirable neighborhood into an attractive one less rapidly.Of course the community's plan does not promote any of the vicious and destructive results mentioned. Why would it? . . .But the proposal put before you by city staff is an ambush containing all those destructive consequences, packaged very sneakily with visually tiresome, unimaginative, and imitative luxury project towers. How weird, and how sad, that New York, which has demonstrated successes enlightening to so much of the world, seems unable to learn lessons it needs for itself. I will make two predictions with utter confidence. 1. If you follow the community's plan, you will harvest a success; 2. If you follow the proposal before you today, you will maybe enrich a few heedless and ignorant developers, but at the cost of an ugly intractable mistake. Even the presumed beneficiaries of this misuse of governmental powers, the developers and financiers of luxury towers, may not benefit; mis-used environments are not good long-term economic bets.Come on, do the right thing. The community really does know best.Sincerely, Jane Jacobs This letter clearly articulated well-defined principles without any prescription for style, design, or use designations. But that was what she was about. This is pure Jacobs and the ant.i.thesis of generally accepted government policy.

SoHo regenerated organically through the private actions of many individuals, mostly artists to start. But that was in the 1970s when few cared about this district. Few noticed what was happening because it was ad hoc and in small, almost unnoticeable, steps. Few recognized the significance of these small things slowly adding up to big change. As noted, this was happening unnoticed as well in neighborhoods around the city, from the Upper West Side to the South Bronx to Park Slope. The unfolding change was different in each neighborhood because the people and neighborhoods were different, shaped by many individual doers, including some developers. But those development plans for the most part were in scale with the neighborhood, too contained to spur cataclysmic change. But by the 1990s and surely by 2000, real estate investors discovered similarly gritty Greenpoint-Williamsburg and other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Planning officials were right there to initiate rezoning plans to expedite new frontiers for excessive neighborhood-altering new development. Jane's letter to the mayor could have been sent on behalf of any of those neighborhoods targeted for rezoning.

How ironic! The historic district, SoHo, that showed the nation the potential for regeneration of industrial neighborhoods had unleashed a redevelopment frenzy now undermining the virtues and authentic character of similar neighborhoods across the city.

SoHo's earlier history exposes the intentional destruction of New York's industrial economy. This is little recognized. SoHo is only one example of this destructive path. The conventionally accepted view that industry died a natural death or spontaneously left town for suburban locations is contradicted by the SoHo story, as with other areas of the city, as we will see.

5.

RECONSIDERING ROBERT MOSES.

What's to Reconsider?

Robert Moses' legacy is highly overrated. If he hadn't had FDR priming the pump with money, little that he did would have gotten done. And while Moses was pouring cement for highways, plenty of people elsewhere were building public buildings and other essential projects. WPA money flowed into socially useful projects of immense variety, such as schools, day care centers, hospitals, clinics, colleges, firehouses, police stations, libraries, and markets.MIKE WALLACE, historian, director, Gotham Center for New York City History Routine, ruthless, wasteful, oversimplified solutions for all manner of city physical needs (let alone social and economic needs) have to be devised by administrative systems which have lost the power to comprehend, to handle and to value an infinity of vital, unique, intricate and interlocked details.JANE JACOBS, The Death and Life of Great American Cities A growing kind of revisionism is apparent today, championed by some planners, developers, architects, historians, critics, and politicians who wish for a new Robert Moses "who could get things done in New York." The crescendo of this call rises to its greatest pitch when a coalition of citizen and issue-based groups vigorously oppose or manage to delay some megascheme. Sometimes, in all seriousness, this suggestion comes with the caveat that this should be a "modified Robert Moses," a little gentler, more benign, somewhat humane, and, even, with a dose of Jane Jacobs thrown in. This is a hilarious oxymoron. The a.s.sumption that the audacity of a Moses can be tempered by a dose of Jacobs is erroneous to the core. The writings and advocacy of Jacobs make this clear. Occasionally, a wishful speaker wants to demonstrate fairness to both Moses and Jacobs or to pick and choose from each. Not possible. This is an either-or, black-or-white condition. growing kind of revisionism is apparent today, championed by some planners, developers, architects, historians, critics, and politicians who wish for a new Robert Moses "who could get things done in New York." The crescendo of this call rises to its greatest pitch when a coalition of citizen and issue-based groups vigorously oppose or manage to delay some megascheme. Sometimes, in all seriousness, this suggestion comes with the caveat that this should be a "modified Robert Moses," a little gentler, more benign, somewhat humane, and, even, with a dose of Jane Jacobs thrown in. This is a hilarious oxymoron. The a.s.sumption that the audacity of a Moses can be tempered by a dose of Jacobs is erroneous to the core. The writings and advocacy of Jacobs make this clear. Occasionally, a wishful speaker wants to demonstrate fairness to both Moses and Jacobs or to pick and choose from each. Not possible. This is an either-or, black-or-white condition.

No matter that in his early good government career Moses was a legitimate reformer, no matter how n.o.ble one thinks Moses was because he ama.s.sed only unbridled power and not bags of money for himself, no matter how wonderful one might judge Moses's parks, he was probably the most undemocratic, arrogant, ruthless, and racist unelected government official of the twentieth century.1 One can't separate the man, his methods, and his monuments. This is a leopard with immovable spots. One can't separate the man, his methods, and his monuments. This is a leopard with immovable spots.

His most contemptuous quotes are the stuff of legend: "When you operate in an overbuilt overbuilt [emphasis added] metropolis, you have to hack your way through with a meat ax." Overbuilt? Back then? If overbuilt then, what would he say now? And: "To make an omelet, you have to break an egg." And: "If the ends don't justify the means, what does?" And, "Cities are made by and for traffic." [emphasis added] metropolis, you have to hack your way through with a meat ax." Overbuilt? Back then? If overbuilt then, what would he say now? And: "To make an omelet, you have to break an egg." And: "If the ends don't justify the means, what does?" And, "Cities are made by and for traffic."

Take him in all his autocratic glory or reject him entirely. No in between is possible. Trying to blend Moses and Jacobs is like trying to push together the old black-and-white Scottie dog magnets: the harder you push, the more resistance you feel.

THE PARK DEFENSE.

Some of the exuberant praise for Moses's parks is even questionable, such as all the green gra.s.s around public housing-a legacy of the tower-in-the-park plan with the ubiquitous little black sign with white letters, "Keep Off the Gra.s.s." The same was true in city parks. I remember as a child occasionally ignoring that prohibition in Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park and getting summoned off the green by some park official. Since then, some of the unused gra.s.s areas around public housing have been converted to parking lots or play areas. Some have just been left as fenced-in gra.s.s.2 In the early 1960s, Central Park was under a.s.sault by Moses, notes Anthony C. Wood in Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect the City's Landmarks Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect the City's Landmarks. Robert Moses was pus.h.i.+ng to let Huntington Hartford build a thousand-seat, two-story cafe, designed by Edward Durrell Stone, in the southeast corner of the park across from the Plaza Hotel. Only fierce citizen opposition stopped this plan. And, of course, there was the Tavern-on-the-Green episode related earlier in this book.

Landscape historian Betsy Barlow Rogers, who led the monumental restoration of Central Park starting in 1975, wrote in detail how Moses ignored the purpose and design of the park as a masterpiece of scenic, pa.s.sive recreation to impose his notion of a site for monuments, active play facilities, and increased automobile convenience.3 While accepting some of his encroachments as worthy, Rogers notes that Moses created the twenty-two fenced-off playgrounds around the perimeter of the park "to preserve the surrounding scenery. To further discourage romping on the gra.s.s, he encircled lawns with pipe rail fencing, posted 'Keep Off the Gra.s.s' signs, and made infractions of this rule punishable by fine." While accepting some of his encroachments as worthy, Rogers notes that Moses created the twenty-two fenced-off playgrounds around the perimeter of the park "to preserve the surrounding scenery. To further discourage romping on the gra.s.s, he encircled lawns with pipe rail fencing, posted 'Keep Off the Gra.s.s' signs, and made infractions of this rule punishable by fine."4 He should see the throngs sitting or playing on that gra.s.s today. He should see the throngs sitting or playing on that gra.s.s today.

Moses must be turning over in his grave looking at Bryant Park, with all the countless people every day sitting on movable chairs or on the gra.s.s itself.5 It was his rendition of that park as a walled-off sanctuary in the 1930s that made it so hospitable for drug users but hostile for everyone else. The current redesign, based on principles of sociologist and author Willian H. Whyte, returned the park to daily users by the thousands when it reopened in 1992. It was his rendition of that park as a walled-off sanctuary in the 1930s that made it so hospitable for drug users but hostile for everyone else. The current redesign, based on principles of sociologist and author Willian H. Whyte, returned the park to daily users by the thousands when it reopened in 1992.

And Jones Beach? A masterpiece started in the 1920s with state bonding funds and continued during the Depression when the federal government thought it good policy to put people to work on great public works around the country. Building a public amenity with public funds was still an accepted notion. Most surviving Works Progress Administration projects built everywhere in the country still have similar enormous appeal.

But as beautiful as it is, Jones Beach purposely excluded the poor. Moses engineered the Southern State Parkway and other roadways leading to it so that the overpa.s.ses were built too low for public buses to drive under. Moses's key staff person revealed this to Robert Caro. Some of those bridges have since been rebuilt with higher vehicular headroom. But, for the most part, buses still can't get through them with ease, according to Department of Transportation officials. Buses could fit under part of some of them but not entirely, thus rendering it improbable any bus would risk it. By his order, no ma.s.s transit could be built in the rights-of-way along the highway routes that would have made beach access available to the poor-then mostly immigrants or anyone without a car. Is that an appropriate public public park design in a democracy, no matter how aesthetically appealing? park design in a democracy, no matter how aesthetically appealing?

If he could help it, Moses built only for the white middle cla.s.s in cars in cars. That what he built eventually benefited the poor and working cla.s.s was surely not his intent. When the middle cla.s.s left the neighborhoods in which Moses inserted desirable recreation sites, the poor moved in and benefited. Moses's playgrounds are also a celebrated accomplishment-658 of them citywide, one in Harlem, none in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And La Guardia had to force Moses to landscape the ten blocks of Riverside Park he had cheaply created for Harlem from 145th to 155th Streets, after fierce resistance. As if in retaliation, he built there the only comfort station with a frieze of stone monkeys in the entire city.6 When he built Riverside Park by covering the open train tracks and adding 132 acres of landfill, Moses had stopped the park at 110th Street, leaving the black community with the noise and grime of the trains eliminated in the park below 125th Street and above 145th Street. Even a wide wharf at 125th Street, easily converted for recreation, was ignored, and the ten-block stretch above was left with difficult pedestrian access. When he built Riverside Park by covering the open train tracks and adding 132 acres of landfill, Moses had stopped the park at 110th Street, leaving the black community with the noise and grime of the trains eliminated in the park below 125th Street and above 145th Street. Even a wide wharf at 125th Street, easily converted for recreation, was ignored, and the ten-block stretch above was left with difficult pedestrian access.7 The lush lawns and extensive planting that mark the park's beauty did not appear on that omitted stretch covered by a roadway viaduct. In fact, few amenities grace the six miles of Riverside Park and parkway in the Harlem stretch. Only one of seventeen playgrounds in the park was built in Harlem, and only one of five football fields. He had spent $16.3 million on the first 2 miles from 72nd Street and $7.9 million on the next 4.7 miles. The lush lawns and extensive planting that mark the park's beauty did not appear on that omitted stretch covered by a roadway viaduct. In fact, few amenities grace the six miles of Riverside Park and parkway in the Harlem stretch. Only one of seventeen playgrounds in the park was built in Harlem, and only one of five football fields. He had spent $16.3 million on the first 2 miles from 72nd Street and $7.9 million on the next 4.7 miles.

HIS WAY OR NO WAY.

For decades, New Yorkers have cursed Walter O'Malley for moving the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. But Michael Shapiro in The Last Good Season The Last Good Season doc.u.ments in gruesome detail O'Malley's effort to stay in Brooklyn, an effort tenaciously thwarted by Moses. Moses refused to condemn land in downtown Brooklyn for a new stadium (as the state and city have been anxious to do for the Nets arena included in the Atlantic Yards project on that site), insisting that O'Malley take land in Bedford-Stuyvesant that O'Malley knew was too distant and inappropriate for the purpose. doc.u.ments in gruesome detail O'Malley's effort to stay in Brooklyn, an effort tenaciously thwarted by Moses. Moses refused to condemn land in downtown Brooklyn for a new stadium (as the state and city have been anxious to do for the Nets arena included in the Atlantic Yards project on that site), insisting that O'Malley take land in Bedford-Stuyvesant that O'Malley knew was too distant and inappropriate for the purpose.

One can't ignore how ruthlessly Moses took funding from upstate parks to finance the Long Island parks he favored. Nor can one minimize how he moved the Northern State Parkway 3 miles and then curved it to preserve the property of well-connected wealthy estate owners like Otto Kahn, or the Long Island Expressway for J. P. Morgan. Yet he had no compunction about splitting the working farm of James Roth, covering his most fertile soil with asphalt and making it impossible for the struggling farmer to get his tractor across the highway.

The New York-born Moses never learned to drive, but he set about trying to create a spaghetti network of highways on a scale the country had not yet seen. Most significantly, Moses's roads went through through cities versus cities versus around around them. In retrospect, it is difficult to realize how far ahead of the rest of the country Moses was in highway projects. Other cities' officials watched and followed, going so far as to borrow construction contracts and loan doc.u.ments he created as models. The erroneous, actually false, a.s.sumption is that Moses improved transportation in New York City and the region. What he did was improve only automotive transportation while undermining or killing some transit and preventing its future expansion. them. In retrospect, it is difficult to realize how far ahead of the rest of the country Moses was in highway projects. Other cities' officials watched and followed, going so far as to borrow construction contracts and loan doc.u.ments he created as models. The erroneous, actually false, a.s.sumption is that Moses improved transportation in New York City and the region. What he did was improve only automotive transportation while undermining or killing some transit and preventing its future expansion.

Moses's highway construction was infinitely more destructive of the functioning city than most people recognize. It boggles the mind to consider how much of that functioning city was in the way of the 130 miles that went through New York City and then to imagine the damage that rippled out from each roadway's path like stones tossed in the water. No real calculation has ever been done of homes, businesses, social inst.i.tutions, and churches lost.

THE URBAN RENEWAL BULLDOZER.

Moses was equally influential in shaping the country's urban renewal policies. Caro notes that Moses's Yale cla.s.smate Senator Robert A. Taft reached out to him to discuss "details of a new type of federal slum clearance program-'urban renewal'-that he was considering sponsoring."8 Moses was not alone in his vision for a new urban form. "The era's leading housing reformers, Henry Wright, Clarence Stein, and Lewis Mumford of the Regional Planning a.s.sociation of America, wrote off tenements as relics of nineteenth-century industrialism. The metropolitan future, they argued, lay in towns planted in regional 'greenbelts' where there was room for a new communal civilization."9 This was clearly the idea of the moment, but only Moses had the power to make his version of the vision come true. This was clearly the idea of the moment, but only Moses had the power to make his version of the vision come true.

t.i.tle I of the 1949 Housing Act was the primary vehicle for building middle-income housing on cleared land, which Moses aggressively pursued. 10 10 While Congress was working out the details of this program with Moses's help, Moses persuaded Mayor William O'Dwyer in 1948 to appoint a Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee of which Moses was made chairman. While Congress was working out the details of this program with Moses's help, Moses persuaded Mayor William O'Dwyer in 1948 to appoint a Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee of which Moses was made chairman.11 O'Dwyer had already appointed him construction coordinator and chairman of the Emergency Commission on Housing. Understandably, New York was first in line with the most urban renewal proposals of any city in the country and, in the end, gained the largest share of funding. O'Dwyer had already appointed him construction coordinator and chairman of the Emergency Commission on Housing. Understandably, New York was first in line with the most urban renewal proposals of any city in the country and, in the end, gained the largest share of funding.12 Moses was the master all others emulated. Joel Schwartz describes what this incredible program meant: Moses was the master all others emulated. Joel Schwartz describes what this incredible program meant: t.i.tle I's impact proved enormous. Projects removed 100,000 people from Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, and, with their accompanying public housing, generated a diaspora of at least twice that number. Site clearance forced out at least 5,000 businesses of all sizes, and public housing forced out thousands more. Munic.i.p.al experts declared that these losses . . . were negligible. But in Central and East Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other minority ghettoes, these enterprises nurtured a sizable portion of the black and Hispanic middle cla.s.s. In other neighborhoods, redevelopments wiped out larger businesses or forced their ruinous s.h.i.+ft to other quarters. Job loss as a direct result of redevelopment was between 30,000 and 60,000 in the postwar period. By the late 1950s, the number had risen to several hundred thousand.13 These were direct impacts. No way exists to measure the ripple effects of the lost businesses, residences, and inst.i.tutions near the newly formed gaping hole. It is safe to say, however, that once the undermining began in one area, fraying of the larger surrounding fabric took on its own momentum.

Gay Talese described how a big project's clearance spreads deterioration beyond the specific cleared site. In a 1964 New York Times New York Times story about the ma.s.sive dislocation impacts in Bay Ridge following the demolition of five hundred homes and the dispossessing of seven thousand people for the expressway leading to the new Verrazano Bridge, Talese wrote: story about the ma.s.sive dislocation impacts in Bay Ridge following the demolition of five hundred homes and the dispossessing of seven thousand people for the expressway leading to the new Verrazano Bridge, Talese wrote: In all, it took 18 months to move out the 7,000 people. Eventually, even the most stubborn-or out-of-touch residents of Bay Ridge abandoned their homes because of resignation or fear-fear of being alone in a spooky neighborhood; fear of the bands of young vagrants who occasionally would roam the area smas.h.i.+ng windows or stealing doors, picket fences, light fixtures or shrubbery; fear of the derelicts who would sleep in empty apartments or hallways; fear of the rats that people said would soon be crawling up from the shattered sinks and sewers because, it was explained, "rats also are being dispossessed from Bay Ridge."14 The federal official in charge of the program in the early years told Caro, "Because Robert Moses was so far ahead of anyone else in the country, he had great influence on urban renewal in the United States-on how the program developed and on how it was received by the public-more than any other single person."

Urban renewal became a favorite of mayors across the country because of the lava flow of federal funds that came with it, especially if coupled with a highway project. Few cities resisted like Savannah, where, a local resident reports, "it was resisted as a communist plot." Where the demolition derby got started, it was hard to stop. Each ma.s.sive project inevitably led to further decay and an accelerated cycle of clearance. The holes in the urban fabric of American cities are still visible today from Buffalo to Cleveland to St. Louis and beyond.

t.i.tle I was, indeed, producing middle-income housing, as progressive Democrats, Regional Plan advocates, the press, and all Moses's supporters wanted. Between June 29 and July 2, 1959, the New York Times New York Times published a series of articles, "Our Changing City," surveying the state of public housing and urban renewal. Barren looking, devoid of hope, and overwhelmed with relocation problems are how the articles found public housing. Ford Foundation staffers "became convinced that t.i.tle I had aggravated the city's housing shortage, destroyed many Old Law tenements that could have sheltered low-income residents, and created sterile, crime-ridden environments." published a series of articles, "Our Changing City," surveying the state of public housing and urban renewal. Barren looking, devoid of hope, and overwhelmed with relocation problems are how the articles found public housing. Ford Foundation staffers "became convinced that t.i.tle I had aggravated the city's housing shortage, destroyed many Old Law tenements that could have sheltered low-income residents, and created sterile, crime-ridden environments."15 Deborah Wallace and Rodrick Wallace wrote a very important book, A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled, that shows the enormous impact all this dislocation had on the mental and public health of the distressed population and the entire city and region. They wrote: Many poor neighborhoods simply collapsed from the spatial concentration and temporal peaking of these modes of housing destruction. Health areas of the South-Central Bronx, for example, lost 80 per cent of both housing units and population between 1920 and 1980. About 1.3 million white people left New York as conditions deteriorated from housing overcrowding and social disruption. About 0.6 million poor people were displaced and had to move as their homes were destroyed. A total of almost two million people were uprooted, over 10 percent of the population of the entire Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (25 counties).

Just thinking about the magnitude of this forced migration helps focus on why, by the 1960s and '70s, New York was a collapsing mess. As Moses said, it was the "meat ax" approach to city building.

THE HUMAN TOLL.

What is not recognized sufficiently in regards to any of Moses's cataclysmic urban development schemes is exactly what the Wallaces were referring to: the thousands upon thousands of lives disrupted, the downward spiral of so many lives often jump-started by such ma.s.sive demolition projects, the endless tales of social dislocation. The Wallaces have provided additional insights not often discussed.

Based on years of study, they doc.u.ment how the fires of the 1970s continued to destroy what Urban Renewal started. What they shockingly outline is that this occurred within a framework of deliberate city policies that were based on erroneous information, pseudoscience, manipulated data, and malevolent policy goals.16 The Wallaces effectively show that the closing of firehouses, guaranteeing inadequate responses, and the withdrawal of other munic.i.p.al services in the most vulnerable neighborhoods purposefully continued the clearance that Moses started. The Wallaces effectively show that the closing of firehouses, guaranteeing inadequate responses, and the withdrawal of other munic.i.p.al services in the most vulnerable neighborhoods purposefully continued the clearance that Moses started.17 This all occurred under the post-Urban Renewal policy of "Planned Shrinkage" with the overt goal of killing off "sick" neighborhoods. This all occurred under the post-Urban Renewal policy of "Planned Shrinkage" with the overt goal of killing off "sick" neighborhoods.18 What was often destroyed, the Wallaces note, were, in fact, "stable 'slums,' i.e. poor neighborhoods of old, mildly overcrowded housing that are not experiencing rapid deterioration physically or socially, are true communities, often with a history decades long." They then quote a 1977 book on public health and the built environment by Loren Hinkle, published by the Centers for Disease Control. It goes to the heart of the issue: "It is the social environment and not the physical environment which is the primary determinant of the health and well-being of people who live in cities. . . . The importance of the social milieu is such that the dislocation and disruption of social relations that are produced when one moves a family from a dilapidated dwelling [within a functioning community] to a modern apartment [outside that community] may have adverse effects upon health and behavior that are not offset by the clean, comfortable, and convenient new dwelling."19

5.1 Ricardo Levins Morales designed this poster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for the people left out of the rebuilding planning process in New Orleans. He could just as well have designed it for the people of New York City left out of Robert Moses's construction process. (To view it in splendid color, visit his website www.rlmarts.com.) Such a ma.s.sive scale of social disruption would not have occurred if organic change and a different scale and form of progress had been allowed to take hold-the kind that Jane Jacobs identified as building up the fertility of the land instead of eroding it. So many dismembered lives could have been uplifted instead of undermined, given a different path of development. Voices advocating that alternative path were drowned out by Moses and stilled by the deaf ear of a press and the policy-making community enthralled with his message and accomplishments. Projects on the scale that Moses built inevitably and severely and destructively disrupt the social, economic, and psychological life of thousands. Destabilization is a given. The benefits cannot match the losses.

LEARNING BY LISTENING.

Jacobs's views about city development evolved. As noted in the introduction, she first learned in East Harlem how the delicate urban fabric worked to stabilize neighborhoods. By visiting the area, walking the streets, and talking to residents, she learned how the row houses, small apartment houses, tenements, stores, and local businesses created an intricate web, the whole of which gained strength from the complex, often invisible connection of the parts. Through the eyes of Union Settlement House director and Episcopal minister William Kirk and social worker Ellen Lurie, she also watched it being torn apart by one public housing project after another, wiping out an estimated tens of thousands of dwellings and 1,500 businesses.

Moses plowed through the South Bronx to build the seven-mile Cross Bronx Expressway, connecting the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge to I-95, as Caro vividly details.20 In just one mile, 1,530 families (more than 60,000 people) and businesses were dislocated and 159 buildings demolished. In just one mile, 1,530 families (more than 60,000 people) and businesses were dislocated and 159 buildings demolished.21 This occurred despite the existence of an alternate route a few blocks away that would have been quicker and cheaper. Only six tenements and nineteen families were in the way of the alternate route. Moses dismissed the thousands of Bronx residents and businesses pleading for the alternate route to save their homes, livelihoods, and community, saying only, "It was a political thing that stirred up the animals there." Residents and businesses were given ninety days to leave. Like so many other wiped-out neighborhoods, it had solid schools with involved parents, local businesses, seven movie houses, synagogues, churches, old walk-ups with affordable apartments that had light and air, and all manner of social inst.i.tutions and networks. This occurred despite the existence of an alternate route a few blocks away that would have been quicker and cheaper. Only six tenements and nineteen families were in the way of the alternate route. Moses dismissed the thousands of Bronx residents and businesses pleading for the alternate route to save their homes, livelihoods, and community, saying only, "It was a political thing that stirred up the animals there." Residents and businesses were given ninety days to leave. Like so many other wiped-out neighborhoods, it had solid schools with involved parents, local businesses, seven movie houses, synagogues, churches, old walk-ups with affordable apartments that had light and air, and all manner of social inst.i.tutions and networks.

And what do we have there now? A traffic nightmare with four of the eleven worst bottlenecks in the country. Nineteen of the country's fifty worst bottlenecks are either in the five boroughs or in nearby counties, as Tom Namako reported in the New York Post New York Post on February 26, 2009. On September 20, 2002, Alan Feuer in the on February 26, 2009. On September 20, 2002, Alan Feuer in the New York Times New York Times described the truck-clogged, congested road as "arguably the most savage road in New York City." described the truck-clogged, congested road as "arguably the most savage road in New York City."

THE HUMAN TOLL.

What is seldom mentioned in regards to any of Moses's cataclysmic urban development schemes is the thousands of lives disrupted. Caro's chapter "One Mile" recounts how this devastation undermined the South Bronx and is famously cited for detailing the resulting human pain and suffering. Rare is any similar examination of the human costs of other such disruptive projects. Moses and his public relations machine, along with the political leaders, did such a good job of selling the public on the false notion that these strategies cleaned up "slums," cleared "blight," and replaced "deteriorated" neighborhoods that most people today are unaware of the true condition and quality of these communities and the lives of the people in them.

The true mark of Robert Moses has to be the way he treated the people who stood in his way. Elizabeth Yampierre, a Brooklyn lawyer and citywide leader of the city's environmental justice movement, recalls: My family lived on the Upper West Side, in a blue-collar community. We had a family infrastructure that made it possible for the women in my family to work, for the children to be cared for, and although we were not wealthy by any means, we were doing okay. When we were displaced, we became "roadkill" in Robert Moses' vision. Our family was scattered to the Bronx to Queens and throughout Manhattan. I went to five schools in eight years, and, in my family, some people went on to become drug addicts and some women went on public a.s.sistance. The entire fabric of my family was destroyed as a result of that displacement.

Yampierre told her story at a public celebration of Jane Jacobs's life held in Was.h.i.+ngton Park after Jacobs's death in 2006. Yampierre had not read Jacobs's books.

A similar human tragedy unfolded in South Brooklyn when Moses ignored the pleas of residents of Park Slope and Windsor Terrace to move the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway to avoid razing five hundred buildings, mostly homes. An alternate route, again only a few blocks away, would use mostly vacant lots and "save money and heartache," the Brooklyn Eagle Brooklyn Eagle newspaper reported in March 1945. Even the state legislature unanimously voted a resolution asking for relocation since the road was partially state funded. He ignored them all. newspaper reported in March 1945. Even the state legislature unanimously voted a resolution asking for relocation since the road was partially state funded. He ignored them all.

Moses became known as the country's foremost "master builder," an American Baron Haussmann, the man who shaped nineteenth-century Paris. But Moses didn't start out in that direction.

A REFORMER TO START.

Moses started out as an advocate of government reform and rose to power under Governor Alfred E. Smith, who in 1919 a.s.signed him the task of reorganizing state government, heavily centralizing it and s.h.i.+fting considerable power from the legislature to the governor. As Moses filled an a.s.sortment of appointments, he learned how to navigate that governmental power better than anyone. He didn't override the political system; he used it. With each agency and authority he created and then took over, he began building, first with the Long Island Park Commission, then the New York City Parks Department, the New York State Power Commission, and eventually twelve state and city positions at one time.

The concept of the public authority-an independent agency separated from normal government process of checks and balances and with the ability to issue its own revenue bonds-was Moses's. Proceedings are secret, and records are not public. Authorities were purposely designed to be impervious and impregnable to outside voices and impacts. The public authority, Caro notes, "became the force through which he shaped New York and its suburbs in the image he personally conceived." To this day, the public authority remains a favorite government device "to get things done" and to avoid a genuine public process that includes community input, real negotiation, and compromise.

Probably no one, elected or not, in any other state held such vast power over such an extended period. He served under five mayors: Fiorello La Guardia, William O'Dwyer, Vincent Impellitteri, Robert F. Wagner Jr., and John V. Lindsay. "No law, no regulation, no budget stops Robert Moses in his appointed task," La Guardia once boasted. Since Moses usually wrote the rules for the agencies he led, his task was usually his to define. And he served under six governors: Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehmann, Thomas E. Dewey, Averell Harriman, and Nelson A. Rockefeller.

With all the leaders under whom he served, Moses was famous for threatening to resign his position if he did not get his way. Each relented-until Rockefeller. In 1962 Rockefeller wanted Moses to resign as chairman of the State Council of Parks to make way for his brother, Laurence, long a member of the Palisades Interstate Commission and a known parks and conservation advocate. Rockefeller told Moses he could retain his Long Island parks chairmans.h.i.+p. Moses refused and resigned from both state park positions and the State Power Commission, fully expecting Rockefeller to back down. He didn't. "For decades, governors had dreaded what would happen if they had to be the one to fire Bob Moses. Now one governor had fired Bob Moses. And nothing happened."22 Because he created parks all over the state, he is most favorably known as a great park builder. "As long as you're on the side of parks, you're on the side of the angels. You can't lose."23 Caro quotes Moses here to ill.u.s.trate how well Moses knew how to manipulate public opinion. And while his highways and urban renewal projects are sometimes considered inevitable, there is nothing inevitable about the routes and sites he chose that destroyed dozens of productive and vibrant residential and industrial neighborhoods and uprooted and undermined the lives of more than a million people and businesses. While the estimates of displaced residents and businesses are known for only some projects, a total seems impossible to calculate but is acknowledged to be Caro quotes Moses here to ill.u.s.trate how well Moses knew how to manipulate public opinion. And while his highways and urban renewal projects are sometimes considered inevitable, there is nothing inevitable about the routes and sites he chose that destroyed dozens of productive and vibrant residential and industrial neighborhoods and uprooted and undermined the lives of more than a million people and businesses. While the estimates of displaced residents and businesses are known for only some projects, a total seems impossible to calculate but is acknowledged to be at least at least five hundred thousand people. Some estimates exceed one million. There is no estimate for the displaced businesses. And there was nothing inevitable about his building only residential towers in the park without the traditional mixed uses of an urban neighborhood. five hundred thousand people. Some estimates exceed one million. There is no estimate for the displaced businesses. And there was nothing inevitable about his building only residential towers in the park without the traditional mixed uses of an urban neighborhood.

To a.s.sume improved roads, housing, parks, and expanded universities and other inst.i.tutions would not have happened is foolish. They would indeed have happened but differently. Revisionists would have us believe that Moses was operating in the context of his time, doing what everyone else was doing. Evidence indicates otherwise. He shaped the context of his time. Others learned from him and followed his path.

THE IMPACT OF THE WORLD'S FAIR Moses started the reshaping of the country for the car first through his facilitating the 1939 World's Fair, then through his New York projects, and then by helping other cities plan and design their projects. It was a perfect combination since Moses's vision of park creation always included-and sometimes started with-the necessary vehicular access.

In 1935 Moses took the suggestion that the city should hold a World's Fair in Flus.h.i.+ng Meadow and, as city parks commissioner, made it happen. He quickly recognized the immense potential of the project to enhance his own power and agenda, given the contracts and jobs involved in building the pavilions and the vast network of new Queens highways needed to reach the site and, of course, the enormous park to be created in the process. Nothing about the fair could happen without the approval and input of Moses.

The 1939 World's Fair, with its theme, "The World of Tomorrow," had a greater impact on the subsequent development of the country than most people realize. The fair is widely acknowledged as the icon of the Art Deco period of design. Less recognition, however, exists of its role in shaping urban planning and setting the nation on the car-oriented course that has existed ever since. "The story we have to tell," critic Lewis Mumford said of the fair's theme, "is the story of this planned environment, this planned industry, this planned civilization.24 If we can inject that . . . as a basic notion of the fair, if we can point it toward the future, toward something that is progressing and growing in every department of life and throughout civilization . . . we may lay the foundation for a pattern of life which would have enormous impact in times to come." If we can inject that . . . as a basic notion of the fair, if we can point it toward the future, toward something that is progressing and growing in every department of life and throughout civilization . . . we may lay the foundation for a pattern of life which would have enormous impact in times to come."25 Indeed! Instead of being an enormous trade show at which manufacturers could discover the newest products and technologies, as in fairs past, this fair was directed at consumers. Manufacturers would have the opportunity to exhibit their products and persuade viewers how their lives would be improved. Indeed! Instead of being an enormous trade show at which manufacturers could discover the newest products and technologies, as in fairs past, this fair was directed at consumers. Manufacturers would have the opportunity to exhibit their products and persuade viewers how their lives would be improved.

Two major exhibits vied for and received the most attention. The first was the fair's symbol, the Trylon and Perisphere designed by architect Wallace K. Harrison. Inside the Perisphere was the World of Tomorrow, designed by Henry Dreyfuss, in the form of a model of Democracity. Democracity broke with the tradition of looking for solutions to problems in existing cities and imagined a whole new configuration of highways linking bedroom communities for the middle cla.s.s, industrial districts with workers' housing nearby, and a business and cultural district at the center marked by a single skysc.r.a.per. The message was clear: the current city was no longer viable and its problems intractable. The solution: demolish and rebuild the city and provide alternatives outside of it for those who could afford it.

The more popular exhibit, in fact the most popular of the fair, was General Motors' Futurama, created by industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, which actually dovetailed nicely with Democracity. Here, viewed from a moving platform, was the future with cities built from scratch around highway interchanges. Tiny cars-no congestion, plenty of s.p.a.ce between them-on multilane roadways went over mountains and bridges and ran on liquid oxygen. A fantasy, yes, but an extraordinarily seductive one. Walter Lippmann wrote: "General Motors had spent a small fortune to convince the American public that if it wishes to enjoy the full benefits of private enterprise in motor manufacturing, it will have to rebuild its cities and its highways by public enterprise."26 From then on, the cleverly crafted advertising campaigns of the car manufacturers equated cars with modernity and middle-cla.s.s status, and the automobile industry became the foundation for our postwar economy. Caro notes in a similar vein: The three automotive giants would later plow tens of millions of dollars into his World's Fair at a time when other major companies were shying away from it. In the sense that he was America's, and probably the world's, most vocal, effective and prestigious apologist for the automobile, that he designed highway networks not only for New York but for a dozen cities, that by his success in building expressways in the city he did more than any other single urban official to encourage more hesitant officials to launch major highway-building programs in their their cities, and that, by building them to new, high standards, he did more than any other single urban official to set the early standards for urban expressway design-he was the spearhead, the cutting edge, of this Panzer division of public works. cities, and that, by building them to new, high standards, he did more than any other single urban official to set the early standards for urban expressway design-he was the spearhead, the cutting edge, of this Panzer division of public works.27 The fair's message seems to have altered even Moses's vision for roads. Until then, he built "parkways"-the Taconic, Bronx River, Henry Hudson-all built to connect middle-cla.s.s car drivers to parks for leisure-time enjoyment and some commuting. They were four lanes, beautifully landscaped "ribbon parks," with graceful curves offering bucolic views. Roads went around cities. Early suburbs had evolved along rail lines. The car was an additional means of transportation, not a replacement for the enviable transit system that knitted neighborhoods together into one city and wove the country's cities into a national fabric. That pattern remained until after World War II.

The car culture was emerging emerging, not yet booming booming. The auto industry was to be the vehicle to put the nation back to work. An a.s.sortment of postwar national policies, including the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, purposely spurred that emerging car culture and industry. Those highways would be designed for practical use by commuters and truck traffic, even though many of Moses's roads were still routed to connect parks. Some roads actually sliced through parks, like Upper Manhattan's Van Cortlandt and Inwood. Moses's roads created more traffic, as all new roads do. Experts told him this. They strongly urged him to build transit, too. He refused to listen.

Moses set his own course. One ma.s.sive clearance project followed another in what former Random House editor Jason Epstein called "periodic paroxysms of self-destruction in the name of renewal."28 THE COUNTRY FOLLOWS MOSES.

As the first big highway builder, he created the vision and then the template for the nation. He helped craft the funding and authorizing legislation in Was.h.i.+ngton for urban renewal and highways nationwide. Then he was first in line to get funding for local projects, with the growing strength of the highway lobby behind him.

Aides to President Eisenhower consulted with Moses about national highway needs as they crafted the 1956 Highway Act. One of the early managers and the de facto head of the Interstate Highway System, Bertram D. Tallamy, had formerly served as superintendent of the New York State Department of Public Works. He revered Moses. In the 1920s, Tallamy used to come down from Niagara to attend lectures given by Moses on the art of "Getting Things Done." Tallamy told Caro that "the Interstate Highway System was built by principles he had learned at those lectures."29 After the '56 act was proposed, University of Michigan professor Robert Fishman notes, "Moses became the principle spok