Caro suggest Moses was out of touch as a man so rich, he practically “bought the city itself.” 111 Working class families who could not afford a life in the new suburbs, or a car to get around, became unable to get a ticket to or from their place of work and were effectively barred from the city. Robert Moses’ 1955 proposal saw 9 major commuter railroads such as that to Penn Station, in the heart of the city, torn up. Once again this pushed out the great working class that once filled the city, sliding New York into life as a ‘Luxury City’ that would continue in Manhattan and its surrounding waterfront areas such as Williamsburg, for decades to come. It simultaneously set a pattern of upwardly shifting demographics which we still see today in the ‘gentrification’ of areas such as Brooklyn and Hell’s Kitchen. Urban renewal in New York City allowed it to grow into the iconic city we see today. New York was always a world city, from its colonial days and its years as a vast multicultural ‘melting pot’ during the Great Waves of Immigration through Ellis Island, but the establishment of the UN and its transformation into a corporate and banking hub made it a city of the world in a whole new way. New York has established a pattern which has influenced and shaped other great modern cities throughout the world. If it was not for figures like Moses along with the 89.9 million dollars in redevelopment spending, New York may have become a city left behind, alongside so many of the ‘Rust Belt’ cities. 112 Although New York’s urban renewal projects were not without critics, writers such as Lindgren point out that the rapid reconstruction may have meant a man from New York 40 years before would not recognise the city; it was the vast growth during this period 111 Caro, pp. 933-935. 112 Brent D. Ryan, ‘Shrinkage or Renewal? The Fate of Older Cities, 1950-90’ Design after Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities , (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 37-83 (p. 40).
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