Kenneth Jackson: evaluation

Transcript context

…You could argue, first of all, that New York is not like other cities. It's a world city and has been and what happens to the rest of the United States is, I accept a little bit of that, but not all of it. You say, New York is just New York. And so whatever happens here is not necessarily because of Moses or different from Detroit, but I think it's important to realize its history has been different from other American cities. Most American cities, especially the older cities, have been in relative decline for 75 years. And in some ways New York has too. And its relative dominance of the United States is less now than it was because there's been a shift south and west in the United States. But the prosperity of New York, the desire of people to live in it, and after all, one of its problems is it's so expensive. Well, one reason it's expensive is that people want to live there. If they didn't want to live there, it would be like Detroit. It'd be practically free. You know what I mean? So there are answers to these issues. Moses' ways, I think, were interesting. First of all, he didn't worry about legalities. He would start an expressway through somebody's property and dare a judge to tell him to stop after the construction had already started. Most of the time, Moses was kind of like Hitler. I don't mean to say he was like Hitler but what I mean is you have such confidence. You just do things and dare other people to change it. I'm going to do it. Most people don't have that. I think there's a little bit of that in Trump, but not as much. I don't think he has nearly the genius or brains of Moses. But there's something to self-confidence. There's something to having a broad vision. Moses liked cities, but he didn't like neighborhoods or people. In other words, I don't think he loved New York City. He really thought everybody should live in the suburbs and drive cars and that was the world of the future and he was going to make that possible. He thought all those old law tenements in New York, which is really anything built before 1901, were slums. They didn't have hot and cold water. They often didn't have bathrooms. He thought they should be destroyed and that his vision of high-rise public housing was an improvement. Now around the United States, we don't think these high-rise public housing projects are so wonderful but he thought he was doing the right thing. And he was so arrogant, he didn't listen to people like Jane Jacobs, who fought him and said, “You're saying Greenwich Village is a slum? Are you kidding me?” He thought it was a slum. Go to Greenwich Village today. Try to buy anything for under a million dollars. It doesn't exist. He saw old things, old neighborhoods, walking, and thought they were hopelessly out of date. And he was wrong. He was wrong about a lot of his vision. Now we understand that and all around the country, we're trying to revitalize downtowns and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and gasoline and cars. wrong. He was wrong about a lot of his vision. Now we understand that and all around the country, we're trying to revitalize downtowns and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and gasoline and cars. But Moses didn't see the world that way. It's interesting. He never himself drove a car. Can you believe that the man who had more influence on the American car culture, probably even more than Henry Ford, himself was always driven. He was chauffeured. In fact, he was so busy that Caro talks about him as having two limousines behind each other. He would have a secretary in one and he would be dealing with business and writing letters and things like this. And once she had all she could do they would pull off to the side of the road. She would get out of his car and the car that was following would discharge the secretary in that car. They would switch places and the fresh secretary would get in the backseat, Moses and her would continue to work. And the first secretary would go to type up whatever she had to do. He worked all the time. He really didn't have much of a private life. There are people like Robert Moses, but not so many, and he achieved his ideal. I think that there are so many ironies there. Not only did he not drive himself, he didn't appreciate the density of New York, which many people now love, and it's getting more dense. They're building tall buildings everywhere. He didn't really appreciate the diversity. He didn't care about that, but it worked. And I just think we have to appreciate the fact that he did what was impossible, really impossible, and nobody else could have done what he did. If he hadn't done it then, he sure as heck wouldn't be able to do it in the 21st century, when people are even more litigious. You try to change the color of a door in New York City, you try to do something positive, like build a free swimming pool, fix up an old armory and turn it into a public place, there'll be people who'll fight you. I'm not kidding. Moses didn't care. When he built the Cross Bronx Expressway he said, “I'm going to do this.” which in some ways was horrible what he did to these people, but Caro mischaracterizes what happened. It's a dense working class —let's call it Jewish neighborhood—in the early 1950s and Moses decides that we need a big highway going right through it. He sent masses of people letters that said “Get out in 90 days.” He didn't mean 91 days. He didn't mean let's argue about it for four years. Moses meant the bulldozers will be bulldozing. We just don't have that kind of attitude anymore. It's kind of funny now to think back on it, but it wasn't funny to the people who got evicted. But again, as I say, it's hard to imagine New York City without the Cross Bronx Expressway. They tore down five blocks of dense buildings and built this road right through it. And they didn't worry about where they were going to rehouse them. I mean, they did, but it didn't work. Now it's so busy, it's crowded all the time. So what does this prove? That we need more roads? But you can't have more roads in New York because if you build more roads, what are you going to do with the cars? so busy, it's crowded all the time. So what does this prove? That we need more roads? But you can't have more roads in New York because if you build more roads, what are you going to do with the cars? Right now, the problem is there are so many cars in the city, there's nothing to do. It's easy to get around in New York, but what are you going to do with the car? The car culture has the seeds of its own destruction. Just parking cars or putting them in a garage is a problem. Moses didn't foresee that. He thought that you're all going to live in the Long Island suburbs or Westchester suburbs or New Jersey suburbs, park your car in your house and come into the city to work. Now, the city is becoming a place to live more than a place to work. So what they're doing in New York as fast as they can is converting office buildings into residential units. He would never have seen that people with options would want to live in the city. That they would reject a single family house and choose a high rise and choose the convenience of going outside and walking to a delicatessen over driving to a grocery store. It's a world he never saw.…

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