Robert Moses: The Man Who Built New York City

Robert Moses was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York City area from the 1920s to the 1970s. He is known for his influential role in shaping the region's infrastructure and public works projects, including parks, highways, and public housing.

His legacy is controversial due to accusations of racism, elitism, and a lack of concern for the needs of minority communities.

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Today's Daily Dose short biography film covers the life and work of Robert Moses, who built up New York City's infrastructure during the early to mid 20th century. The filmmaker has included the original voice over script to further assist your understanding:

Today on The Daily Dose, Robert Moses, The Man Who Built New York.

Born in 1888 New Haven Connecticut, Robert Moses earned his Bachelor’s degree from Yale, a Masters in jurisprudence from Oxford and a PhD in political science from Columbia University, rising to unelected power in 1924 under the tutelage of his friend and trusted advisor, Governor Al Smith. Now regarded as one of the most powerful men in the history of New York State, Moses transformed New York City from the early to mid-20th century, in a series of bold infrastructure projects and urban development philosophies which influenced a generation of engineers, architects and urban planners in cities across North America.

In his more than forty-year career, Moses held as many as 12 simultaneous titles, including New York City Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Long Island State Parks Commission, becoming an expert at writing laws and manipulating the inner workings of New York state government, including the issuance of bonds to fund his many projects, with little outside input or oversight. Among his many achievements is the construction of Jones Beach State Park, the most visited public beach in America, the New York State Parkway System, the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Throgs Neck Bridge and several major highways. On the downside, many of Moses’ projects witnessed the destruction of large swaths of tenement housing neighborhoods, displacing many impoverished minority residents to large public housing projects, which in turn inspired other U.S. cities to duplicate New York’s high rise tenements for the poor.

Although highly regarded throughout most of his career, his reputation came under increased scrutiny after the 1974 publication of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography The Power Broker, which painted Moses as a power-grabbing and quite vindictive man of questionable ethics and treatment regarding many of the city’s poor minorities, which he repeatedly displaced with an almost vindictive, racist zeal, making Robert Moses, a one-man army who forever changed the face of New York City.

And there you have it, Robert Moses, today on The Daily Dose.

[alhekziz]

Is good and interesting to know that this character from the "Motherless Brooklyn" movie really did exist, so we can meditate and decide ourselves if he was a bad or good guy for our towns, cities and people.