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If you’re interested in this in much more detail, see The Power Broker (Robert Moses and the Fall of New York) by Robert A. Caro

js2 7y ago
This piece is about the English parks that inspired Olmsted. The Power Broker is about Robert Moses. Does it spend much time on Olmsted and his inspirations for Central Park?
- Alex3917 7y ago
  I haven’t read the book, but would it even be possible to understand Robert Moses without understanding Olmstead?
  - kunai 7y ago
    I think you underestimate the sheer genius of Robert Caro. I cannot think of a biographer or scholar who researches, digs, puts his hands in the mud more to uncover the truth. He is a national treasure. His Moses and LBJ bios are absolute gems in the literary canon of biography as a genre.
  - lordgrenville 7y ago
    I read the book a few years ago, and I'd summarise it as follows: -In a democracy, it's extremely hard to build big projects, as there are too many stakeholders with conflicting interests -Moses tried to do things democratically and failed. He then figured out a way to hack the system by things like appropriating tons of power into an obscure position (Parks Commissioner), using bond funding which was much more protected constitutionally because it's a contract between private citizens, throwing money into a project before it was authorised and then saying he had to finish it otherwise the money would have been wasted, etc. -He was phenomenally successful, until he was eventually stopped, and since then everyone is stuck with the "not being able to build anything" problem, especially in NYC (eg [1] ) -The reason Moses was bad was basically that his ideas didn't move with the times, which happens to everyone but especially people in positions of huge and unaccountable power. He never appreciated the vibrancy of urban life and wanted to put highways and parkways everywhere. He was also very racist (again, not moving with the times). -Which is kind of why we have democracy in the first place -People's feelings about parks, though, haven't changed so much in all of that time. Central Park went into a bit of a decline after Moses (along with the city in general) but is now more vibrant than ever. Hence, I don't remember much in the book about Olmsted. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/new-york-infrastructure-costs.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/new-york-infrastructu...

js2 7y ago

This piece is about the English parks that inspired Olmsted. The Power Broker is about Robert Moses. Does it spend much time on Olmsted and his inspirations for Central Park?

Alex3917 7y ago
I haven’t read the book, but would it even be possible to understand Robert Moses without understanding Olmstead?
- kunai 7y ago
  I think you underestimate the sheer genius of Robert Caro. I cannot think of a biographer or scholar who researches, digs, puts his hands in the mud more to uncover the truth. He is a national treasure. His Moses and LBJ bios are absolute gems in the literary canon of biography as a genre.
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  I read the book a few years ago, and I'd summarise it as follows: -In a democracy, it's extremely hard to build big projects, as there are too many stakeholders with conflicting interests -Moses tried to do things democratically and failed. He then figured out a way to hack the system by things like appropriating tons of power into an obscure position (Parks Commissioner), using bond funding which was much more protected constitutionally because it's a contract between private citizens, throwing money into a project before it was authorised and then saying he had to finish it otherwise the money would have been wasted, etc. -He was phenomenally successful, until he was eventually stopped, and since then everyone is stuck with the "not being able to build anything" problem, especially in NYC (eg [1] ) -The reason Moses was bad was basically that his ideas didn't move with the times, which happens to everyone but especially people in positions of huge and unaccountable power. He never appreciated the vibrancy of urban life and wanted to put highways and parkways everywhere. He was also very racist (again, not moving with the times). -Which is kind of why we have democracy in the first place -People's feelings about parks, though, haven't changed so much in all of that time. Central Park went into a bit of a decline after Moses (along with the city in general) but is now more vibrant than ever. Hence, I don't remember much in the book about Olmsted. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/new-york-infrastructure-costs.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/new-york-infrastructu...