The Highway Fight that Changed Cities Forever
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I live in a different city than NYC but have resided in two neighborhoods that were threatened with demolition via highway construction. Thank God those plans were overruled and that the Moses style approach has since been discredited.
Date: 2023-09-11
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Comments and reviews: 19
Colorme
I realize that your video is time-constrained, but a key element of the death of the LOMEX project was Moses' big-picture plan to build THREE elevated expressways across Manhattan, at least one of which would have placed noisy, fume-spewing traffic jams right outside the windows of some of the city's most valuable commercial office buildings. This led to many powerful real estate barons turning against Bob the Builder, their former ally. It wasn't just a grass roots freeway revolt. He also pissed off the REAL powers that make New York City the center of the known universe.
As Caro explains, the final nail in shadow emperor Moses' coffin wasn't his behind-the-scenes monkey business, his destruction of poor but functional neighborhoods, his displacement of at least 300, 000 (possibly half a million) citizens, his deliberate financial sabotage of the NYC subway system, the financial failures of the 1939 and 1964 world's fairs, his ultimate bankrupting of the entire city, or any of his other famously notorious actions. It was the simple act of removing a beloved tree from Central Park and pissing off a bunch of moms.
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I realize that your video is time-constrained, but a key element of the death of the LOMEX project was Moses' big-picture plan to build THREE elevated expressways across Manhattan, at least one of which would have placed noisy, fume-spewing traffic jams right outside the windows of some of the city's most valuable commercial office buildings. This led to many powerful real estate barons turning against Bob the Builder, their former ally. It wasn't just a grass roots freeway revolt. He also pissed off the REAL powers that make New York City the center of the known universe.
As Caro explains, the final nail in shadow emperor Moses' coffin wasn't his behind-the-scenes monkey business, his destruction of poor but functional neighborhoods, his displacement of at least 300, 000 (possibly half a million) citizens, his deliberate financial sabotage of the NYC subway system, the financial failures of the 1939 and 1964 world's fairs, his ultimate bankrupting of the entire city, or any of his other famously notorious actions. It was the simple act of removing a beloved tree from Central Park and pissing off a bunch of moms.
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Gabe
I will never get over how scummy it was of Moses to run the Dodgers out of Brooklyn. Moses hated transit because it benefited the poor and non-whites. I am convinced that the reason why he tried to force them to move to Flushing Meadows where the Mets are is because he hated how diverse and unified the Dodgers' fanbase was and sought to destroy that by any means necessary. A true premium scumbag indeed. All of those World Series championships that they won in LA should've belonged to Brooklyn full stop. Brooklyn was robbed of their community, rich baseball history, one of sports' greatest cathedrals, a piece of their pre-NYC heritage, and their dynasty all thanks to one racist tyrant and his supreme unelected power greater than even the governor's. The Giants were goners thanks to the Yankees, but the Dodgers could've stayed.
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I will never get over how scummy it was of Moses to run the Dodgers out of Brooklyn. Moses hated transit because it benefited the poor and non-whites. I am convinced that the reason why he tried to force them to move to Flushing Meadows where the Mets are is because he hated how diverse and unified the Dodgers' fanbase was and sought to destroy that by any means necessary. A true premium scumbag indeed. All of those World Series championships that they won in LA should've belonged to Brooklyn full stop. Brooklyn was robbed of their community, rich baseball history, one of sports' greatest cathedrals, a piece of their pre-NYC heritage, and their dynasty all thanks to one racist tyrant and his supreme unelected power greater than even the governor's. The Giants were goners thanks to the Yankees, but the Dodgers could've stayed.
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Em
It's funny now hearing Moses' rationale for demolishing those areas. Many of the formerly lower income and low value neighborhoods he mentions are now heavily gentrified yuppie enclaves and still have pretty shoddy car infrastructure. There's an article called The Urban Trend of Our Time by Pete Saunders, highlighting how throughout the US (and also abroad) the wealthy no longer seek the suburbs but instead look for living and career opportunities in major urban centers.
Since this is NYC in the video, think of the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, DUMBO, Greenpoint, LIC, Astoria etc. Mostly former working class, low income or industrial neighborhoods. Jacobs was right in the long run, although Moses did give us some good projects too and the city would not be what it is today without him.
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It's funny now hearing Moses' rationale for demolishing those areas. Many of the formerly lower income and low value neighborhoods he mentions are now heavily gentrified yuppie enclaves and still have pretty shoddy car infrastructure. There's an article called The Urban Trend of Our Time by Pete Saunders, highlighting how throughout the US (and also abroad) the wealthy no longer seek the suburbs but instead look for living and career opportunities in major urban centers.
Since this is NYC in the video, think of the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, DUMBO, Greenpoint, LIC, Astoria etc. Mostly former working class, low income or industrial neighborhoods. Jacobs was right in the long run, although Moses did give us some good projects too and the city would not be what it is today without him.
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Peizxcv
I took me 1 hour 15 minutes and 19 to drive from New Jersey to Queens last night. Anyone that think Moses was wrong and how great SOHO/downtown is never lived in New York and especially outside of Manhattan. Those people are basically tourists and have no idea Manhattan is the only viable route from Long Island to the rest of the US
For Jane Jacobs, the moved to Toronto in 1968. You think she is going to stick around for the mess she made?
For city planners making quarter million and live in SOHO thinking how great his neighborhood is and people in Jersey and Queens should stay in their neighborhoods and ride around on bikes, you aren t a city planner, you are a NIMBY
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I took me 1 hour 15 minutes and 19 to drive from New Jersey to Queens last night. Anyone that think Moses was wrong and how great SOHO/downtown is never lived in New York and especially outside of Manhattan. Those people are basically tourists and have no idea Manhattan is the only viable route from Long Island to the rest of the US
For Jane Jacobs, the moved to Toronto in 1968. You think she is going to stick around for the mess she made?
For city planners making quarter million and live in SOHO thinking how great his neighborhood is and people in Jersey and Queens should stay in their neighborhoods and ride around on bikes, you aren t a city planner, you are a NIMBY
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raventhorX
She doesn't sound like a nimby to me. She was trying to prevent people from getting displaced with the character of a neighborhood being destroyed due to plans to create a highway. nimbyism to me is attempting to prevent developments from creating additional multi family housing in a specific area. I don't see either being the same and I feel she would have fought for these multi family housing if she was still involved today. The highway project would destroy neighborhoods with no real significant gain unlike multi family housing which can add diversity to a neighborhood and has a real impact on providing options for people to remain housed.
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She doesn't sound like a nimby to me. She was trying to prevent people from getting displaced with the character of a neighborhood being destroyed due to plans to create a highway. nimbyism to me is attempting to prevent developments from creating additional multi family housing in a specific area. I don't see either being the same and I feel she would have fought for these multi family housing if she was still involved today. The highway project would destroy neighborhoods with no real significant gain unlike multi family housing which can add diversity to a neighborhood and has a real impact on providing options for people to remain housed.
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Timothy
I look forward to the Boston video on the inner belt highway cancellation. The areas of Somerville, Cambridge and Arlington are some of the coolest in the area and would have been absolutely destroyed. They are also extremely sought after and valuable in today s market. Density that is solid, transit that is some of the best in the country. Somerville used to be called Slummerville until it was gentrified, aka rich typically white folk noticed how nice it was not to drive everywhere and have unique areas to live in with old housing stock that has solid bones and beautiful details.
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I look forward to the Boston video on the inner belt highway cancellation. The areas of Somerville, Cambridge and Arlington are some of the coolest in the area and would have been absolutely destroyed. They are also extremely sought after and valuable in today s market. Density that is solid, transit that is some of the best in the country. Somerville used to be called Slummerville until it was gentrified, aka rich typically white folk noticed how nice it was not to drive everywhere and have unique areas to live in with old housing stock that has solid bones and beautiful details.
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Andy
I shudder to think of how much less vibrant and pedestrain-friendly New York City would be if it was decimated by highways cutting through its center like so many other U. S cities. I recently graduated from NYU and it was wonderful experiencing all the neighborhoods in the area: Soho, Greenwich, Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. Yes, many of these neighborhoods are experiencing rampant gentrification, but at least they're still here and still given a chance to thrive and improve, a chance that has been denied to so many neighborhoods in other cities.
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I shudder to think of how much less vibrant and pedestrain-friendly New York City would be if it was decimated by highways cutting through its center like so many other U. S cities. I recently graduated from NYU and it was wonderful experiencing all the neighborhoods in the area: Soho, Greenwich, Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. Yes, many of these neighborhoods are experiencing rampant gentrification, but at least they're still here and still given a chance to thrive and improve, a chance that has been denied to so many neighborhoods in other cities.
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brmnyc
You said that Moses delivered projects under budget. If you read The Power Broker you'll learn that this was often not the case--far from it. He had a strategy of obtaining what appeared to be a reasonable budget approval for many of his projects such as the Henry Hudson Parkway, only to blow through the budgets after being only about half way complete, with a construction site in place of what had formerly been there. His answer was basically: how can we stop here now? He would manage to get more money in order to complete each project.
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You said that Moses delivered projects under budget. If you read The Power Broker you'll learn that this was often not the case--far from it. He had a strategy of obtaining what appeared to be a reasonable budget approval for many of his projects such as the Henry Hudson Parkway, only to blow through the budgets after being only about half way complete, with a construction site in place of what had formerly been there. His answer was basically: how can we stop here now? He would manage to get more money in order to complete each project.
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Lee
NIMBYs use a lot of the tools designed to prevent planners like Moses from steam-rolling projects very cynically. All those community and environmental reviews plus if they are Left NIMBYs language about how preserving single family zoning helps people of color attain house ownership, and yes this is actually something somebody said from a person involved in the lawsuit where a judge made Minneapolis restore single family zoning. Jacobs might have been doing the right thing at the time but her overall legacy might not be that great.
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NIMBYs use a lot of the tools designed to prevent planners like Moses from steam-rolling projects very cynically. All those community and environmental reviews plus if they are Left NIMBYs language about how preserving single family zoning helps people of color attain house ownership, and yes this is actually something somebody said from a person involved in the lawsuit where a judge made Minneapolis restore single family zoning. Jacobs might have been doing the right thing at the time but her overall legacy might not be that great.
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nacoran
Moses was an evil man. I like the occasional grand project, and highways were the big thing, but he deliberately targeted communities of color and deliberately built infrastructure to be unfriendly to transit because he was a racist who didn't want minorities traveling into 'his' white communities. It would have been interesting if he'd been interested in diversity and mass transit. The MTA toll system gave them a lot of money and leverage to develop their network.
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Moses was an evil man. I like the occasional grand project, and highways were the big thing, but he deliberately targeted communities of color and deliberately built infrastructure to be unfriendly to transit because he was a racist who didn't want minorities traveling into 'his' white communities. It would have been interesting if he'd been interested in diversity and mass transit. The MTA toll system gave them a lot of money and leverage to develop their network.
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Blog
Solano County, CA has this debate over a new city right now on different grounds. You have farmers, Travis Air Force Base and Environmentalist on one side but you also have the More Housing, Venture Capitalists and New City crowd on the other side all debating about annexing and forming another city. All of it ended in about the motives of the leadership on the Yes on New City side with concerns on how a new city meets County, State and Federal standards.
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Solano County, CA has this debate over a new city right now on different grounds. You have farmers, Travis Air Force Base and Environmentalist on one side but you also have the More Housing, Venture Capitalists and New City crowd on the other side all debating about annexing and forming another city. All of it ended in about the motives of the leadership on the Yes on New City side with concerns on how a new city meets County, State and Federal standards.
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Pieter
It is just mentioned in passing but the argument that rising property prices are a good thing will just not die. Everywhere the promise of capitalism is that we get abundance and lower prices, but with real estate greed replaces common sense. By the way, where there is already medium density I don't think nimbyism is bad. It is more important to create new popular urban environments than to push more people in an already popular place.
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It is just mentioned in passing but the argument that rising property prices are a good thing will just not die. Everywhere the promise of capitalism is that we get abundance and lower prices, but with real estate greed replaces common sense. By the way, where there is already medium density I don't think nimbyism is bad. It is more important to create new popular urban environments than to push more people in an already popular place.
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The
Moses' ability to push through almost all opposition to get the stuff he wants built is something that would be welcomed nowadays against NIMBYism.
Of course, this is ignoring the fact that his push for highways and focus more on catering to suburbanites with cars is part of the reason we have these issues, and he has done significant damage to both New York and other places that learned from him.
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Moses' ability to push through almost all opposition to get the stuff he wants built is something that would be welcomed nowadays against NIMBYism.
Of course, this is ignoring the fact that his push for highways and focus more on catering to suburbanites with cars is part of the reason we have these issues, and he has done significant damage to both New York and other places that learned from him.
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Sammi
Thanks Dave for making this video. Honorable mention in NYC, is the Gowanus Expressway which destroyed and Sunset Park, Brooklyn neighborhood, and the Belt Parkway that ruined the Bay Ridge Brooklyn neighborhood. At that time, lots of early immigrants from Scandinavian and Nordic countries lived there. I don't necessarily buy that they pick neighborhoods to build highways with a racial motive
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Thanks Dave for making this video. Honorable mention in NYC, is the Gowanus Expressway which destroyed and Sunset Park, Brooklyn neighborhood, and the Belt Parkway that ruined the Bay Ridge Brooklyn neighborhood. At that time, lots of early immigrants from Scandinavian and Nordic countries lived there. I don't necessarily buy that they pick neighborhoods to build highways with a racial motive
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clinton
I feel like this video waters down the urban renewal strategies - like building highways - of the 20th century that did shape American cities forever. This doesn't come close to bringing up the discriminatory nature in which Robert Moses used urban renewal. I would ask for a part 2 of this video but maybe ask the Richard Rothstein, author of color of law, to give commentary here.
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I feel like this video waters down the urban renewal strategies - like building highways - of the 20th century that did shape American cities forever. This doesn't come close to bringing up the discriminatory nature in which Robert Moses used urban renewal. I would ask for a part 2 of this video but maybe ask the Richard Rothstein, author of color of law, to give commentary here.
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Kaitlyn
As someone who doesn't live in the US, I'd only heard a bit about Moses here and there. I was expecting this story to be just another time he pushed through his vision against local opposition I literally said to my screen of course Moses won, he always won in the intro. Nice to know it's not quite that black and white, and that he fell out of political popularity by the 60s.
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As someone who doesn't live in the US, I'd only heard a bit about Moses here and there. I was expecting this story to be just another time he pushed through his vision against local opposition I literally said to my screen of course Moses won, he always won in the intro. Nice to know it's not quite that black and white, and that he fell out of political popularity by the 60s.
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VictorSneller
Once you sink in that first stake, they'll never make you pull it up. -- Robert Moses. That's definitely my motto. Neighbors are selfish, greedy, and vicious over the smallest possible changes. We need merciless authoritarians for walkable urbanism and high-speed rail. Raise whole square miles of useless SFH at a time and replace it with real city-structure.
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Once you sink in that first stake, they'll never make you pull it up. -- Robert Moses. That's definitely my motto. Neighbors are selfish, greedy, and vicious over the smallest possible changes. We need merciless authoritarians for walkable urbanism and high-speed rail. Raise whole square miles of useless SFH at a time and replace it with real city-structure.
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Timothy
If Jacobs was all that to be able to take down Moses, then how was not able to stop Austin Tobin with the Port Authority and the destruction of Radio Row for the development of the original World Trade Center? I wanna hear that story because the early years of the twin towers are always overlooked especially now with them being destroyed and replaced.
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If Jacobs was all that to be able to take down Moses, then how was not able to stop Austin Tobin with the Port Authority and the destruction of Radio Row for the development of the original World Trade Center? I wanna hear that story because the early years of the twin towers are always overlooked especially now with them being destroyed and replaced.
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tyrport
Eisenhower was also against city highway construction. It ll take twice as long, cost twice of much and then they ll want us build parking. The idea of the his Highway system was to take cars to the city s edge, to be transportation between cities. The congressional members of NewYork and California joined together to force what we have now.
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Eisenhower was also against city highway construction. It ll take twice as long, cost twice of much and then they ll want us build parking. The idea of the his Highway system was to take cars to the city s edge, to be transportation between cities. The congressional members of NewYork and California joined together to force what we have now.
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