Kenneth Jackson: evaluation

Transcript context

…Caro makes that argument mostly about East Tremont and places like that in the Bronx where the Cross Bronx Expressway passed through. And he says this perfectly wonderful Jewish neighborhood that was not racially prejudiced and everybody was happy and not leaving was destroyed by Moses. As a historian of New York City, or for that matter, any city, if a student comes to you and says, that's what I found out, you say that it runs counter to the experience of every city so let's do a little more work on that. If you look at the census tracts or the residential security maps of S.H.A, you know it's not true. The Jews were leaving and had nothing to do with the thing. They didn't love blacks. The Bronx was called the Jewish borough at the time, those neighborhoods that weren't on the Cross Bronx Expressway all emptied out mostly. So the Bronx itself was a part of New York City that followed the pattern of Detroit and Baltimore and Cleveland. Bronx is now coming back, but it's a different place. I've said this in public, Caro wouldn't know those neighborhoods if he landed there by parachute. They're much better than he ever said they were. He acted like if you went outside near the Bronx County Courthouse, you needed a wagon train to go. I've taken my students there dozens of times and shown them the people, the old ladies eating on the benches and stuff like this. Nobody's mugging them. He just has an outsider's view. He didn't know the places he was writing about. But I think Caro was right about some things. Moses was personally a jerk. You can make it stronger than that. He was not your friendly grandfather. He was arrogant. He was self-centered. He thought he knew the truth and you don't. He was vindictive and ruthless. But some of his strategies were good. He made people building a beach or a building feel like they’re building a cathedral. “You're building something great and I'm going to pay you for it and let's make it good. Let's make it as best as we can.” That itself is a real trick. How do you get people to think of their jobs as more than a job, as something else? Even a beach or a wall or something like that. He also paid them and that's important. He said he was improving things for the people. I don't know if you want to talk about Jane Jacobs, who was his nemesis. I tend to vote with Jane Jacobs. Jane Jacobs and I agree on a lot of things or did before she died a few years ago. Jane Jacobs saw the city as intricate stores and people living and walking and knowing each other and eyes on the street and all these kinds of things. Moses didn't see that at all. He saw the city as a traffic problem. How do we tear this down and build something big and get people the hell out of here? That was a mistake. Moses made mistakes. But what Moses was doing was what everybody in the United States was doing, just not as big and not as ruthless and not as quick. It was not like Moses built a different kind of world than exists in Kansas City. ses was doing was what everybody in the United States was doing, just not as big and not as ruthless and not as quick. It was not like Moses built a different kind of world than exists in Kansas City. That's exactly what they did in Kansas City or every other city. Blow the damn roads to the black neighborhoods, build the expressway interchanges, my hometown of Memphis criss crossed with big streets, those neighborhoods gone. They're even more extensive in places like Memphis and Kansas City and New Orleans than they are in New York because New York builds relatively fewer of them. Still huge what he built. You would not know from the power broker that Los Angeles was building freeways too. Or he says that New York had more federal money. Well, not true. I've had students work in Chicago and Chicago is getting more money per person than New York for some of these projects. Some of the claims, no doubt he got those from Moses' own records. If you're going to write a book like this, you have got to know what's going on in other places. Anyway, let's go back to your questions. No, no. That was one of the things I was actually going to ask you about, so I was glad to get your opinion on that. I've been preparing for this interview and trying to learn more about the impact of these different projects. I was trying to find the economic literature on the value of these highways. There was a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Morgan Foy, or at least a digest by Morgan Foy, where he's talking about the economic gains from highways. He says, “The gains tend to be largest in areas where roads connect large economic hubs where few alternative routes exist. Two segments near New York City have welfare benefits exceeding $500 million a year. Expanding the Long Island Expressway had an estimated economic value of $719 million”, which I think was Moses. He says, “Of the top 10 segments with the highest rate of return, 7 are in the New York City area.” It turns out that 7 of the top 10 most valuable highway segments in America are in New York. The way Caro paints Moses' planning process, is that it's just very impulsive and feelings-based and in some cases, almost out of malice towards poor people. Given that a century later, it seems that many of the most valuable tracks of highways were planned and built exactly how Moses envisioned, it makes you think that there was some sort of actual intelligent deliberation and thought that was put into where they were placed.…

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