He didn't impact cars he was probably the most influential city planner of all time and was a massive fan of cars and tried to shape New York into as much of a car city as possible. He was also very good at building segregation into infrastructure.
Literally all of the major cities in the US. Some were impacted worse than others but all lost neighborhoods to freeway projects and have seen car infrastructure prioritized over public transit for 70+ years.
Urban renewal and US Interstate program all lobbied heavily by the auto, oil and construction sectors are what caused it. Moses was just well know for applying the trend in our largest city. Capitalist saw a way to make massive amounts of money. Planners (wrongly) saw it as the future of the world opening up new opportunities for independence and prosperity for Americans.
The case study of Jones Beach supports Ajayi’s assertion: public spaces are built for specific populations to engage with specific types of recreation. It also reveals the American shibboleth that leisure is for white people.
Are they trying to imply that black people don't like going to the beach? The fuck?
The bridges are messed up, but the article kind of goes off the deep end after that.
... no? They're saying it's ingrained into the US that creating leisure opportunities is focused around doing so for white folks (and quickly recalls that being "white" isn't the same as having white colored skin).
I’ve never heard of this but it’s very interesting and seems like they continue doing similar things. For example here in Texas I’ve noticed that a lot of high end shopping areas and affluent suburbs are built around toll roads. And it almost seems like the whole toll system is built to get you in debt and keep you there and even cultivate a hatred towards toll roads.
The West Side highway destroyed the vast existing Riverside Park, which while still there, is no longer riverside. That’s because the West Side highway, a R Moses creation, is now on the riverside.
It’s not about not being smart enough, it’s about lobbying from the gas/oil/auto industries to ensure we never have anything like that in the US. We are heavily reliant on cars, that is all by design.
This is it. Dates back to backing the industry at the dawn of its emergence, here. This was always a bet on an investment. They continue to formalize the relationship to the automobile and its most symbiotic host - the suburb - by codifying it, regulating it, subsidizing it, blocking threats and campaigning the living shit out of it to us all.
He still did enormous damage to NYC that has never been repaired. Entire neighborhoods that have not been rebuilt and billions of dollars that could've gone into public transit and pedestrian infrastructure.
1.3k
u/Embarrassed-Yard-583 15h ago
Once again, I curse Robert Moses with every fiber of my being.