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> I'm well aware of his history, and it's always interesting to me how few bad things people can point to that he actually did.. when weighed against all the transit/bridges/tunnels/highways build under his watch.

Nixing the Staten Island tunnel is a pretty bad one[1]: you could argue, not unrealistically, that Staten Island would be a far denser and better integrated borough with mass transit access had that project gone through.

As a native UWSer, I'd also argue that the Henry Hudson Parkway was a pretty bad call on his part: it was an "obvious" highway to build, but it more or less permanently froze the expansion of a major rail line underneath it (the West Side Line) and means that one of the most beautiful parks in the city is semi-separated from the neighborhoods that are closest to it.

Moses' legacy can also be measured in part by the graveyard of projects that were too obscene even for his own time: his desire to build a bridge and highway over Battery Park, for example, or to divide Washington Square Park with an expressway.

Edit: I didn't even mention the CBE; Moses is arguably directly responsible for the generations of economic and environmental blight that accompanied that particular highway.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/nyregion/staten-island-su...

See these are better examples!

But also, it's easier to find fault in the actions of someone who takes action. And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.

It's hard to fault anyone since for bad major road/transit/bridge/tunnel projects because there really haven't been any!

And we look at things like projects NOT built by Moses and ask - if they were so good, so obvious, and Moses so bad not to build them, what has the city been doing the last 70 years and how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?

> And especially to judge them based on the values of our time rather than theirs.

More than a few of Moses' projects were egregious, even for his time. What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.

> how many people are as bad or worse to not have built them?

This requires us to think counterfactually: we just don't know how the city could have turned out, because the political energy, financial capital, and plain old physical space that could have gone into mass transit systems went into highways instead.

> What made Moses a great (as in powerful) urban planner was his ability to mold policy decisions to his values, not the values of the neighborhoods that he bulldozed, much less the values of the elected officials who represented those neighborhoods.

I think this is key. Regardless of the values, we have built up a system where everyone can veto a project, or require more studies and concessions such that the price increases significantly. So we end up in an equilibria that nobody particularly wants, where nothing gets done, and the few projects that squeak-in cost too much.

We need better mechanisms to solve the collective action problems. A more consolidated transit authority, with more unilateral power, that nevertheless still had an elected odd member board with majoritarian decision making power would potentially do it. But a big part of the problem is that we can't fundamentally satisfy everyone. We need to optimize everyone's interests and compensate where we can't, but consensus on this stuff is rarely possible.

> The second one is obviously morally wrong, though even that is in dispute

I don't really think this one is in dispute honestly:

    Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the 
    use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, 
    by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit he had vetoed the Long Island 
    Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this 
    reason. Now he began to limit access by busses; he instructed Shapiro to build 
    the bridges across his new parkways low - too low for buses to pass. Bus trips 
    therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouraging long and 
    arduous.

- The Power Broker, pp 318

That's the quote that is disputed.

> how few bad things people can point to that he actually did..

I'd encourage you to read The Power Broker, if you haven't. Some examples that aren't "policy decisions" we can disagree with given our knowledge of how it turned out (eg, building or not building public transit in a given place), but rather things that were clearly morally wrong at the time:

- repeated wholesale destruction of low-income neighborhoods through a variety of bridge, park, and highway construction projects

- evicting farmers and poor rural landowners through opaque legal methods to build highways and parks atop their land

- running a "slum clearance" program that primarily evicted people from slums and demolished them without providing any real place for the humans to go afterwards

- funneling vast sums of money into the pockets of collaborators, friends, and, in the end, himself

The Power Broker paints a nuanced picture, but he did some pretty terrible things in his time.

The linked Bloomberg article actually says that buses served Jacob Riis Park (not Jones Beach) at its opening, and that it is in fact true that the Southern State Parkway has lower clearances along the route to Jones Beach than other similar roads around the region from that time.

> Also, you can presently get there by bus - https://new.mta.info/guides/beaches/jones-beach

That route is absolutely awful. For a typical NYC resident - not even "typical working-class" but anyone - going one-way is 75-100 minutes, two transfers, and around $25-30 per person, while carrying everything you need for the beach. Only the last 20 minutes are actually by bus.

Compared to what?

I mean.. what good beaches can you get to from NYC, even by car, in 75-100min?

That's like how long it takes me to drive to Jones Beach, from Brooklyn, on a good day.

Amazing how many NYCers miss out on Rockaway Beach.

Much shorter drive. Accessible by subway. Just a better beach than Jones -- far superior food and entertainment at the concessions, and way way bigger.

Sure, I've been there.

But even living in North Brooklyn, my travel options there are - 59min drive or 75min trains&walking.

People make these grand statements like we've purposely made it impossible for poor people to get to the beach by bus, but everything in NYC is impossible to get to for everyone, all the time.

Anyway, if you are in Manhattan, the real play is LIRR to Long Beach. Frequent trains, extremely clean, lots of space, long boardwalk, rental bikes, lots of food & restaurants, clean restrooms (amazingly rare at US beaches).. $15/person (kids under 13 free, and I think theres a family pass) to enter beach.

So what do you think about Jane Jacobs?

I think she was a moderating force against Moses, and you need that tension for you to have progress.

Unfortunately the Jacobs camp has won completely, and the idea of an inertia-less city frozen in amber is somehow the defacto good standard now. The city has insufficient development for its rate of population growth, and anemic transit infrastructure building.

So Manhattan becomes a playground for the rich only.

Chicago and DC notably built a lot of median subways during the 50s and 60s.