Building and rebuilding New York.

• Author: Root, Damon W.
• Position: Soundbite - Roberta Brandes Gratz interview - Interview

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For nearly half a century, urban planner Robert Moses wielded unprecedented power over the city and state of New York. He built highways, bridges, parks, pools, public housing, Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, and the United Nations--and he wasn't averse to seizing private property in the process, sending bulldozers, wrecking balls, and detonation crews to displace entire neighborhoods. In her engaging new book The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, the journalist and urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz chronicles Moses' reign and the unlikely resistance it sparked from the writer and activist Jane Jacobs, author of the landmark 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Associate Editor Damon W. Root spoke with Gratz in February.

Q: How did Moses and Jacobs each view urban life?

A: Moses is big, top-down, a lot of clearance, very automobile-centric. Jacobs is respectful of neighborhoods, a transit advocate, an advocate of the civic voice. By my calculation Moses displaced probably close to a million New Yorkers out of a population of 8 million. With his departure in the early '70s the city had an opportunity to organically regenerate. That was an organic regeneration along the lines of what Jane Jacobs wrote about and advocated.

The city we have today emerged in that process. The most popular neighborhoods and the most livable neighborhoods in New York today are the ones that Robert Moses never touched, and the weakest and least desirable are the ones he did.

Q: How much power did Moses have?

A: He controlled essentially all the construction in New York City and a good deal of New York state in terms of roads, housing, and urban renewal. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority--that was the key source of Moses' funds. He could spend all the money from the tolls on the highways and bridges. When the federal urban renewal program was developed in Washington, he was first in line for the big bucks. And the press loved him. There was no real spotlight on the kind of abuse he practiced. He called the people "animals" when...