>>1680990A lot of Robert Moses’ philosophy was rooted in early 20th century Progressivism. Cities were full of crowded slums and the masses needed parks and mobility to get away from the squalor. The subways had actually been doing a very good job of enabling people to live in the outer boroughs with nicer dwellings but Moses went all in with cars and highways.
He was a reformer, from an affluent German Jewish family that looked down on Eastern European Jews who came straight from the shetls to the Lower East Side. He had good intentions at first to uplift the masses via public works but eventually it became a nightmare world of highways blasted through stable neighborhoods and hellish high rise public housing, and he became a spiteful power hungry monster.
When I lived in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, an old Irish cop and fireman neighborhood, any mention of Moses to the old timers would set off bitter rants about the Prospect Expressway that sliced their quiet neighborhood in half.
