forever. It is still hotly debated whether this period was the making or destruction of New York City. A key player in post-war New York’s urban renewal was Robert Moses, a public official who had already established his enthusiasm for redevelopment during the period of FDR’s ‘New Deal’. A polarizing figure, Moses was not without detractors, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia (1931-1945), stated that Moses held too much power and without himself as Mayor there was no controlling him. 92 Some, such as Robert Caro, blame him for the ‘fall of New York’ while others praised him for the ‘rise of New York’. 93 Whatever the opinions of urbanists and historians, it is clear that Robert Moses greatly influenced the shape of modern New York. He made millions through expansive development of highway systems (notably at the expense of public transportation), new residential construction, and the building of vast suspension bridges that spanned right across the five boroughs and into Long Island 94 , leaving a new kind of city in his wake. The process of slum clearance and redevelopment that Moses oversaw was the biggest of its kind in the United States; twenty-six separate areas were cleared in an effort to address the physical disorder of the city. Across the U.S., slum clearance was a preferred development strategy in inner cities at this time, encouraged by the US Housing Act of 1949. The Act is sometimes referred to as the “bulldozer approach” as it wiped out so many areas, selling building
92 New York: A Documentary Film: The City and the World: 1945–2000 , dir. by Ric Burns (New York: Steeplechase Films, 2001). 93 Brian Tochterman, The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), p. 59. 94 Tochterman, p. 59.
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