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 stakeholder

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...