Goodbye, Old Friend
I finished “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, this morning after reading it on and off since I moved to New York in January. I’m just glad I didn’t carry it into to 2010 with me.
[S]o many of the dominant features of the landscape are [Moses’]—and those features are likely to endure indefinitely. Some of his highways will probably be covered with housing—the sale of air rights above them, just beginning in the 1970s, seems an innovation likely to gain favor—and thus invisible, no longer part of the landscape. Some may be rerouted or widened beyond recognition, although, given the cost and complexities of condemnation, the length of time it would take to reroute or reshape even some substantial fraction of the 627 miles of these arteries would have to be calculated not in decades, but in generations and perhaps centuries. The roads of Rome stood for two thousand years and more; who would predict less for the roads of Moses? Who would predict less for his Shea Stadium, a structure consciously shaped to resemble Rome’s Colosseum because he was afraid that his convention center-office tower “Coliseum” didn’t make the comparison clear enough?
Because I can’t get enough urban planning Jane Jacobs, with a much more reasonably sized book, is up next.
