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I have mixed feelings regarding Moses. After reading several works on his life and his impact, I feel that his "achievements" are/have been outweighed by the costs He is, regardless on your position, a remarkable individual.
His works and projects have formed present day NY (city and state) as well as the other public works throughout the country. The amount of projects completed under his "reign" is mind boggling - surely there has been huge benefit as a result. However the cost has been too great in some cases - (ie Cross Bronx Expwy and the BQE - changed (destroyed) those neighborhoods.
I consider the projects that did not come to be: Battery Bridge, Cross L.I.Sound Bridge, extending Ocean Pkwy to Montauk and am... releaved.
Moses accomplished what he did -because- he did not understand the point of compromise. So many of these projects never would have been built had he comprosed. Unfortunately he was "succesfull" more often then not.

Moses had plans to build THREE elevated expressways slashing crosstown in NYC. One was going to go along 30th Street. The third was going to be built over 125th Street. What do you think that would have done to those neighborhoods if they were built?

What about western cities like Tucson or Phoenix? Having spent time there, I see little of Jane Jacobs' influence. They would suggest that some other model of urban planning (or lack thereof) has also shaped the American city, for the worse: strip malls, widely separated subdivisions, wide roads and highways intended for cars, little investment in public transportation or downtown areas.

The problem with the Cross Bronx Expressway is that it is not LARGE enough.
Also, the decay of the Bronx was caused by PEOPLE not highways. Neglect by landlords and changing times and tastes.

I remember looking at apartments in the West Village in 1975; many were at or just above $100/month. You could get a fairly nice tenement 1 BR for $175/month--not that different from the rent Upper West Side--then considered an unsafe, ratty area of the city.

Soho too is unique, and _should_ have been saved. What happened to it (and virtually the whole city) due to this massive influx of people isn't Jacobs' fault. But there is a cultural history and a value there that only the most soulless would want to see paved over.

Shall all Manhattan look like a mass Co-op city?

How enriching.

I am a native New Yorker. Back in the 60's, Soho and the West Village were hardly filled with wealthy hipsters. Jane Jacobs can hardly be described historically as a real estate speculator.

The projects that were built by Moses were segregated from the neighborhoods that they resided. No commercial zoning was permitted in these projects. As a result, you felt like you were less in a neighborhood and more in a gulag, removed from the rest of the area. At least that's how it felt for me, living in the projects in Hells Kitchen in the 60's and early 70's.

You're absolutely right on cars in parks, Leonard. "Death and Life" recounts the fight to close Washington Square Park to cars, and I have in my posssession a letter Jane Jacobs wrote to me supporting the ongoing effort to rid Central Park's loop road of car traffic. Below is what she wrote.

Ken Coughlin
Chair, Transportation Alternatives' Car-Free Central Park Campaign

I enthusiastically endorse the campaign to close Central Park's loop drive to regular automobile traffic. We had the same sort of fight in Washington Square Park in the late 1950s and in my neighborhood here in Toronto a couple of years ago: same prediction of traffic chaos, same result of no chaos, diminished traffic counts and no counts increased elsewhere in consequence. Isn't it curious that traffic engineers are so loath to learn something new even after repeated demonstrations? Both in Washington Square Park and in my Toronto neighborhood we got our way by pressing for an experimental trial period. A trial, with traffic counts on the Central Park perimeter streets, will be more persuasive than any amount of talk, letter-writing, resolutions, and other endless wheel-spinning.

Good luck!

Listen to Moses's speeches. Loved building highways, hated people. He is responsible for starting the decay of the Bronx by building that horrible highway, the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Jane Jacobs perserved the West Village for wealthy hipsters and perserved Soho for wealthy New Jersey shoppers. The "slum clearance" projects of Robert Moses still house working people.

Today, all the work Jacobs did is being dismantled by NYU, which, with the shameful collaboration of our village representatives, is razing both villages.

Seen the North side of W. 3rd recently? Remember the ivy-covered buildings, what a neighborhood it was?

Seen the South side of Washington Sq. Park recently?? Only Judson church, completely overshadowed and overwhelmed by NYU monstrosities is left.

Where is our Jacobs for today??

MIA amongst our supposed reps.