Kenneth T. Jackson - Robert Moses, Hero of New York?

1. 0:00 – 11:13

   Preview + Intro

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson0:00

      ... Robert Moses represented a past that's, you know, a time when we wanted to build bridges and super highways and things that pretty much is going on i-... We're not building super highways now. We're not building vast bridges like Moses built all the time. Essentially, all the big roads, all the bridges, all the parks, the United Nations, Lincoln Center, uh, the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964, and hundreds of other things he built. Had Robert Moses not lived, not done what he did, New York would have followed the trail of maybe Detroit. And I think it was the best book I ever read. In broad strokes, it's correct. Robert Moses had more power than any urban figure in American history. He built incredible monuments. Uh, he was ruthless and arrogant and honest.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel0:53

      Okay. I am really, really excited about this one. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Professor Kenneth T. Jackson about the life and legacy of Robert Moses. Professor Jackson is the preeminent historian on S- New York City. He was the director of the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History and the Jacques Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where he has also chaired the Department of History, um, and we were discussing, um, Robert Moses. Professor Jackson is, uh, the author and editor of Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. Uh, Professor Jackson, welcome to the podcast.

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:37

      Well, thank you for having me.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:39

      Okay. So many people will have heard of Robert Moses, um, and be vaguely aware of him through that, uh, through the popular biography of him by Robert Caro, The Powerbroker, but most people will not be aware of the extent of his influence on New York City. Uh, can you give a, can you give a kind of a summary of the things he was able to get built in New York City?

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson2:02

      One of the best comparisons I can think of is that R. Caro himself, when he compared him to, um, Christopher Wren in London, he said if you would see his monument, look around, it's almost more easier to talk about what Moses didn't do than what he did do. If you, um... All the roads, essentially all the big roads, all the bridges, all the parks, the United Nations, Lincoln Center, uh, the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964, and hundreds of other things he built. And I mean, he didn't actually do it with his own two hands, but he was in charge. He got it done. And y-... R. Caro wrote a really great book. I think the book was flawed because I think, uh, Caro only looked at Moses's own documents, and Moses had a very narrow view of himself. I mean, he thought he was a great man, but I mean, he didn't pay any attention to what was going on in LA very much, for example.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel3:09

      Mm-hmm.

   7. KJKenneth T. Jackson3:09

      But he clearly, by any standard, he's the greatest builder in American history. There's nobody really in second place. And not only did he build and spend this vast amount of money and h-... He was in power for a long time, really a half century more or less. So... And he, he was a... had a per-... had a singular focus. You know, he was married, but his personal life was not important to him. He wa-... He, he, he did it without scandal, really. Even Caro admits that he really died with less than he started with, so I mean-

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel3:43

      Mm-hmm.

   9. KJKenneth T. Jackson3:44

      ... he wasn't... He wanted power and, uh, he had... Boy, did he have power. Um, technically was subservient to governors and mayors, but since he built so much and since he had multiple jobs, that was part of his secret. He had, you know, as many as six, eight, ten different things at once. If the mayor fired him or got rid of him, he had all these different ways which he was in charge of that the mayor couldn't. So you were afraid... You... People were afraid of him and they also respected him. He's very smart and he worked for a dollar a year, so what are you gonna get him for? Um, as Caro says, nobody is really to be compared with Robert Moses. In fact, compares him with an act of nature. In other words, the person you can compare him with is God. You know, that's the person... He, he put the rivers in. He put the hills in. He put the island in. Compare that to Moses, what Moses did. No other h- person-

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel4:48

       Mm-hmm.

   11. KJKenneth T. Jackson4:48

       ... could compare to that. You know, it's a little bit of exaggeration, but when you really think about Robert Moses and you read The Powerbroker, you are stunned by the scope of his achievement. Just stunned. And even beyond New York, when we build, think of the interstate highway system, which really starts in 1954, '55, '56 and which is, you know, 40 something thousand miles of interstate highways, those were built by Moses' men, people who had in their young life had worked with the parkways and expressways in and around New York City so they were ready to go. And so Moses... And Moses also worked outside New York City, mostly inside New York City, but, um, he achieved so much. So partly you need to understand it's not easy to get things done in New York. It's very, very dense, much... Twice as dense as any place in the United States and full of neighborhoods that feel like little cities and are little cities and that don't want change, even today. A place like Austin, for example, is heavy into development. Not New York.... you want to build a tall building in New York, you gotta fight for it, you know? So, and the fact that he did so much in the face of opposition speaks a lot to his methods and the way he... How did Moses do what he did? That is a huge question because it isn't happening anymore. Certainly not in New York City.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel6:22

       Yeah, and that's really why I actually wanted to talk to you and talk about this book because, um, y- you know, The Power Broker was released in 1974 and at the time, New York was not doing well, um, which is to put it mild- mildly. But today, um, the crisis we face is one where we haven't built significant public works, uh, in many American cities for decades and so it's interesting to look back on a time when we could actually get a lot of public works built very quickly and very efficiently and l- uh, s- m- see if, like, maybe we, maybe we got our characterization of the people at the time wrong. Um, and that's where your 2007 book comes in. So I'm curious, how was the book received 50 years after, uh, or I guess 40 years after The Power Broker was released? H- h- what was the reception like? How has the, um, the intellectual climate around these issues changed in that time?

   13. KJKenneth T. Jackson7:18

       The Power Broker is a stunning achievement, but you're right. It's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York. I was thinking that in the 1970s, which is the nad- in New York's 400-year history, we think of the 1970s as being the bottom. The city was bankrupt, crime was going up, corruption was all around. Fi- nothing was working very well. My argument and the subtitle of the 2007 book, or that article is Robert Moses and The Rise of New York, arguing that had Robert Moses not lived, not done what he did, New York would have followed the trail of maybe Detroit and St. Louis and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and most cities in the Northeast and Midwest which really declined. New York City really hasn't declined. It's got more people now than it ever did. It's still a number one city in the world, really. Most, by most of our standards it's the global leader, maybe along with London. At one point in the 1980s, we thought it might be Tokyo, which is the largest city in the world but it's no longer considered competitive with New York and maybe Lo- I'll say London too because New York and London are kind of alone at the top. But I think Robert Moses' public works activities bui- I just don't know that you can have a New York City and not have expressways. I don't like the Cross Bronx Expressway either and don't want to drive on it. But how can you have a world in which you can't go from Boston to San Francisco? You had to have it. You have to have some highways and Caro had it exactly wrong. He talked about Moses and the decline of public transit in New York. Actually, what you need to explain in New York is why public transit survived in New York, where in most other American cities, the only people who use public transit are the losers. Old, disabled, the poor and stuff like... In New York City, rich people ride this, so it's simply the most efficient place to get, way to get around, and the quickest. And so that question needs, some of these things need to be turned on its head. How did he get it done? How did he do it without scandal? I mean, when you think about how the world is in our time, when everything has either a financial scandal or a sexual scandal attached to it, Moses didn't have scandals. Uh, he built the Whitestone Bridge, for example, which is a gigantic bridge collecting, connecting The Bronx to Queens. It's beautiful. It's, it was finished in the late 1930s, on time and under budget. Actually, a little earlier. There's no such thing as that now. You're gonna do a big public works project and you're gonna do it on time? And also, he, he did it well. The, um, Jones Beach, for example, for generations has been considered one of the great public facilities on Earth. I mean, it's gigantic and he created it. You know, I know people say, "It's just sand and water." No, no, it's a little more complicated than that. So everything he did was complicated. He, I mean, I think Robert Caro deserves a lot of credit for doing research on Moses, his childhood, his growing up, his assertion that he's the most important person ever to live in and around New York. And just think of Franklin Roosevelt and all the people who lived in and around New York, and Moses is in a category by himself even though most Americans have never heard of Robert Moses. Um, so his fame is still not... That book made him famous, um,

2. 11:13 – 18:22

   How Moses Gained Power

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson11:13

      and, um, I think his legacy will continue to evolve and I think slightly improve as Americans realize that it's so hard, it's hard to build public works especially in dense urban environments, um, and he did it.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel11:33

      Yeah. There's so much to talk about there, um, but like, one of the, one of the interesting things from The Power Broker is Caro is trying to explain why governors and mayors who were hesitant about the power that Moses was gaining continued to give him more power and there's a section where he's talking about how FDR would keep giving him more positions-... and responsibilities, even though FDR and Moses famously had a, you know, a huge enmity. And he says, "No governor could look at the difficulty of getting things built in New York and not admire and respect," uh Moses' ability to do things as he said, effect- efficiently, on time, under budget and not, not l- not need him essentially, right? Um, but, uh, I mean speaking of scandal you, you were just talking about, uh, you talked about how like he didn't take salary for his, um, you know, 12 concurrent government roles that he was on. But there's a, there's a, uh, there's a very arresting, um, an- anecdote in the Powerbroker where I think he's 71 and his daughter gets cancer and for the first time I think he had to accept a sal- uh, maybe I'm getting the details wrong, but he had to accept salary for working on the World's Fair, um, because he, uh, you know, he, he like, he didn't have enou- he was the most powerful person in New York and he didn't have enough, uh, money to like pay for his daughter's cancer. And e- even, even Caro himself says that t- a lot of the scandals that came later in his life, um, y- they were just like kind of trivial stuff, right, like an acre of Central Park or the, you know, the Shakespeare in the park. It just, yeah, it, it, like it wasn't, uh, the act- things that actually took him down were just trivial, um, trivial scandals.

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson13:08

      Well in: fact when he finally was taken down it took the efforts of person who is almost considered the second most powerful person in the United States, David Rockefeller, and the governor of New York, both of whom were brothers. And they still had to lie to, to Moses to make him kind of get out of power in 1968. But, um, he, he, it was time and he, he was, he exercised power e- until his 70s and 80s, um, and most of it was good. I mean, the bridges are remarkable. The bridges are gorgeous mostly. They're incredible. The Throgs Neck Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the, the, um, Triborough Bridge, uh, they're really works of art. Uh, and he liked to bridge, build things you could see. Um, and I think the fact that he didn't take money was important to it. He, he, you know, he was not poor. I wouldn't say he's not wealthy in New York terms, but he was not a poor person. He went to Yale, uh, as a Jewish person and this is say in the early 20th century, that's fairly unusual. And he lived well, so we can't say he's poor, but I think that Moses, that Caro was right in saying that what Moses was after, in the end, was not sex and not power, and not, not sex and not money. Power. He wanted power. And boy did he get it.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel14:36

      Um, well there's a, there, there's a good review of the book from, um, I'm not sure if I remember the last name but it was Philip Lockgate or something?

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson14:44

      Lopate, I think.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel14:45

      Okay. And they, uh, you know, they had a, they, he made a good point which was that, um, the, uh, connotation of the word power is very negative. But it's kind of a modern thing really to have this sort of attitude towards power that like somebody who's just seeking it must necessarily, has like s- must necessarily have suspicious motivations. If Moses believed and, in fact he was probably right in believing, that he was just much more effective at building public works for, you know, the people who live in New York, was it, um, was it, (laughs) was it irrational of him or was it even, uh, uh, was it selfish of him to like just desire to work 14 hour days for 40 years on end, um, in order to and accumulate the power by which he could build more public works? Uh, so there's a way of looking at it where this pursuit of power is not, um, not itself, uh, you know, troubling.

   7. KJKenneth T. Jackson15:36

      Well first of all I just need to make a point that it was not just New York City. I mean Jones Beach is on Long Island. A lot of those highways, uh, uh, Northern State Parkway, the Southern State Parkway were built outside the city, and also big projects of power authority in Upstate New York. He also was consulted around the world in cities and transportation. So his influence was really felt far beyond New York City and, and of course New York City's so big and so important. Uh, I think also that we might want to think about, at least I think so, what do you want to say, the counter factual argument. Can you imagine... I can remember when I was in the Air Force we lived next door to a couple from New York City. We didn't know New York City at the time. And I can't remember whether she or he was from the Bronx or Brooklyn, but they had, they made us understand how incredibly much he must have loved her to go to Brooklyn or the Bronx to see her and pick her up for dates and stuff like this. You couldn't get there. I mean it would take you three hours to go from the Rockaways in Brooklyn to somewhere in the northern Bronx. But the roads that Moses built, you know, I know, I know at rush hour they're jammed but, you know, right this minute on a Sunday you can whiz around New York City on these expressways that Moses built. It's hard to imagine New York without... The only thing Moses didn't do was the subway. And many people have criticized him because the subways were deteriorated between the time they were built in the early part of the 20th century and 1974 when Caro wrote The Powerbroker. But so had public transit systems all over the United States, and the public transit system in New York is now better than it was 50 years ago, so, um, that trajectory has changed in all these other cities. You know, Pittsburgh used to have 600,000 people, now it has 300,000. Cleveland used to have 900,000 and something, now it's below five. Detroit used to have two million now it's 600 and something thousand. St. Louis used to have 850,000 now it's 300 and s- I mean the, the, the steep drop...... and all these other cities in the Midwest and Northeast. Even Washington and even Boston and Philadelphia, they all declined except New York City, which even though is way bigger than any of them in 1950, is bigger now than it was then. More people crammed into this small space and Moses had something to do with that. (laughs)

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel18:21

      Yeah. Yeah.

3. 18:22 – 27:31

   Moses Saved NYC?

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel18:22

      Yeah. Um, uh, uh, you write in the book, and I apologize for quoting you back to yourself, but you write, "Had the city not undertaken a massive program of public works between 1924 and 1970, had it not built the arterial highway system, and had it not relocated 200,000 people from old law tenements to new public housing projects, New York would not have been able to claim in the 1990s that it was a capital of the 20th century." I would like to make this connection more explicit. So what is the reason for thinking that if New York hadn't, um, done urban renewal and hadn't built the more than 600 miles of highways that Moses built there that, uh, New York would have declined like these other cities in the Northeast and the Midwest?

   2. KJKenneth T. Jackson19:05

      Well, I mean, you could argue first of all, and friends of mine have argued this, that New York is not like other cities. It's a rural city and has been, and what happens to the rest of the United States is... Uh, uh, I accept a little bit of that, but not all of it. They say, "Well, New York is just New York and so whatever happens here is not necessarily because of Moses or different from Detroit." But I think it's important to realize its history has been different from other American cities. Most American cities, especially the older cities, have been in relative decline for 75 years. Um, and, and in some ways, New York has too. In other words, its relative dominance of the United States is less now than... Because there's been a shift south and west in the United States. But the prosperity of New York, the, the desire of people to live in it, and after, after all, one of its problems is it's so expensive. Well, one reason it's expensive is people wanna live there. If they didn't wanna live there, it would be like Detroit, it'd be practically free. You know what I mean? So, um, there, there are answers to these issues but, uh, but Moses' ways, I think were interesting. First of all, he didn't, he didn't worry about legalities, you know? He would start a expressway through somebody's property and dare a judge to tell him to stop after the construction had already started. Then most of the time, Moses, he was kinda like Hitler. It was just, I don't, I don't, that's a... I don't mean to say he was like Hitler.

   3. NANarrator20:40

      (laughs)

   4. KJKenneth T. Jackson20:40

      But what I mean is, but you have such confidence, you just do things and dare other people to change it. You know what I mean?

   5. NANarrator20:48

      Yeah.

   6. KJKenneth T. Jackson20:48

      "I'm gonna do it." And most people don't have that. I think there's a little bit of that in Trump, but I, I... Not as much. I mean, I don't think he has nearly the genius or, or brains of, of Moses. But, um, but there's something to self-confidence. There's something to having a broad vision. Moses liked cities, but he didn't like neighborhoods or people. In other words, I don't think he loved New York City. Here's the person who's more involved. He really thought everybody should live in suburbs and drive cars, and that was the world of the future and he was gonna make that possible. And he thought all those old law tenements in New York, which is really anything built before 1901, were slums and they didn't have hot and cold water, didn't have, often didn't have bathrooms. He thought they should be destroyed. He didn't... And his vision was public housing, high-rise public housing was an improvement. Now, I think around the United States, we don't think these high-rise public housing projects are so wonderful, but he thought he was doing the right thing. Um, and he was so arrogant. He didn't listen to people like Jane Jacobs who fought him and said, "You're saying Greenwich Village is a slum? Are you kidding me?" I mean, he thought it was a slum. Go to Greenwich Village today, try to buy anything for under a million dollars. I mean, it doesn't exist. You know what I mean? I mean, Greenwich Village and, and he, he saw old things, old neighborhoods, walking is hopelessly out of date and he was wrong. He was wrong about a lot of his vision and now we understand that and all around the country, we're trying to revitalize downtowns and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and gasoline and cars. But Moses didn't see the world that way. It's interesting, he never himself drove a car. Can you believe that the man who had more influence on the American car culture, probably, probably even than Henry Ford, um, himself was always driven. He was chauffeured, you know? In fact, in fact, he was so busy that Caro talks about him as having two limousines behind each other and he would have a secretary in one and he would be dealing with business and writing letters and things like this. And then she would have all she could do, they would pull off to the side of the road, she would get out of his car. The, the car that was following would discharge the secretary in that car. They would switch places and the fresh secretary would get in the backseat with Moses and they would continue to work and the first secretary would go to type up, she, whatever she had to do. He worked all the time. He really didn't have much of a private life. Um, there are not many people like Robert Moses. There are people like Robert Moses, but not so many and he achieved his, his, his, his ideal. Um-... I, I think that there are a lot of, so many ironies there. Not only did he not drive himself, he didn't appreciate so much the, the density of New York, which many people now love and it's getting more dense. They're building tall buildings everywhere. Uh, and he didn't really appreciate the diversity, the toleration. You know, he himself was, he didn't care about that. But it worked and I just think we have to appreciate the fact that he did what was impossible, really impossible, and nobody else could have done what he did. Um, and if we hadn't done it then, he sure as heck wouldn't be able to do it in the 21st century when people-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel24:46

      Yeah.

   8. KJKenneth T. Jackson24:46

      ... are even more litigious. You know, you try to, you try to change the color of a door in New York City and there'll be... You try to do something positive like build a free swimming pool, uh, fix up an old armory and turn it into a public place, there'll be people who will fight you. I'm not kidding this. And Moses didn't care. He says, "I'm gonna do this." When he built the Cross Bronx Expressway, which in some ways is, it, it was horrible what he did to these people, uh, but again, Caro mischaracterizes what happened, but it's a dense working class, let's call it Jewish neighborhood in the early 1950s and Moses decides we need an interstate highway or a big highway going right through it. Well, he sent masses of people letters that said, "Get out in 90 days." He didn't mean 91 days. He meant, he didn't mean let's argue about it for four years. Let's go to legit... Moses meant the bulldozers will be bulldozing and that kind of attitude we just don't have anymore. And it's kind of funny now to think back on it, but it wasn't funny to the people who got evicted. Um, but again, as I say, it's hard to imagine a New York City without the Cross Bronx Expressway. Even they tore down five blocks of dense buildings, tore them down and built this road right through it. You live... And they didn't worry about where they were gonna re-house them. I mean, they did, but it didn't work. Um, and now it's so busy, it's crowded all the time. So what does this prove? Uh, that we need more roads, but you can't have more roads in New York 'cause if you build more roads, what are you gonna do with the cars? Right now the problem is there's so many cars in the city there's nothing to do. It's easy to get around in New York but what are you gonna do with the car? You know, the car culture has the seeds of its own destruction. You know, cars, just parking them or putting them in a garage is a problem and Moses didn't foresee those. He foreseen you're all gonna live in the Long Island suburbs or Westchester suburbs or New Jersey suburbs, park your car in your house and come in the city to work. Now the city is becoming a place to live more than a place to work. So what they're doing in New York as fast as they can is converting office buildings into residential units. He would never have seen that, that people would want to live in the city, who had options, that they would reject a single family house and choose high-rise and choose the convenience of going outside and walking to a delicatessen over, over driving to a grocery store. It's a world he never saw.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel27:30

      Yeah.

4. 27:31 – 32:34

   Moses the Startup Founder?

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel27:31

      Yeah. Um, yeah, I like, uh, that, the thing you pointed out earlier about him (laughs) having the two limousines and then the enormous work ethic, um, and then he had the 90 day eviction, I mean, I'm a programmer and I can recognize this trope immediately, right? Robert Moses was a startup founder but in government. Uh, you know, that that attitude is like, yeah, it's like Silicon Valley. That's like... (laughs) We, we all recognize that.

   2. KJKenneth T. Jackson27:54

      And I think we should, we should go back to what you said earlier about why was it that governors or mayors couldn't tell him what to do? Because there are many scenes in The Powerbroker where he will go to the mayor who's wants to do something else and Moses would, "Damn it." He'd say, "Damn it," and throw his pages on the desk and say, "Sign this. This is my resignation." You know? Okay. And I'm out of here because the mayors and governors love to open bridges and highways and, and, and do it efficiently and beautifully and Moses could do that. Moses could deliver. And the, and the workers loved him because he paid union wages, good wages to his workers and he got things done and, and things like more than 700 playgrounds. You know, it wasn't just grand things. Uh, and even though people criticize the 1964 World's Fair as a failure, and financially it was a failure, but still tens of millions of people went there and had a good time. You know? I mean, even some of the things which supposedly were failures, failures according to whom? According to the investment banker? Maybe. But not to the people who went there.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel29:20

      Right. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, the point about the governors and mayors needing him, it was especially important to have somebody who could, like, work that fast if you were gonna get reelected in four years or two years. You need somebody who can get public works done faster than they're done today, right? Uh, if you wanna be there for the opening-

   4. KJKenneth T. Jackson29:35

      A lot faster.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel29:35

      Yeah, exactly. Um-

   6. KJKenneth T. Jackson29:36

      And it's important to realize to say that Moses did try public office once.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel29:41

      Yeah, yeah.

   8. KJKenneth T. Jackson29:41

      He ran for governor.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel29:42

      Yeah.

   10. KJKenneth T. Jackson29:42

       And I, I think it's true that he lost by more than anybody in the history of New York.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel29:47

       (laughs)

   12. KJKenneth T. Jackson29:47

       It was not... You know, he was not an effective public speaker. He was not soft and friendly and warm and cuddly. That's not Robert Moses. The voters rejected him, but the people who had power and also Wall Street because you had to, you had to issue bonds and one of the ways that-... Moses had power was he created this thing called the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority to build the Triborough Bridge. Well now, if in Portland, Oregon you wanna build a bridge or a road, you issue a couple hundred million dollars worth of bonds to the public and assign a value to it. Its interest rate gets paid off by the revenue that comes in from the bridge or the road or whatever it is. Normally, before normally you, you would build a public works and pay for it itself on user fees. And when the u- when the user fees paid it off, it ended. But what Moses, who was called the best bill drafter in Albany, which was a Moses term, he said he was somewhere down in paragraph 13, sections G, say, "And the chairman can only be removed for cause." What that meant was when you buy a bond for the Triborough Bridge or something else, you, you're into a contract that's supported by the Supreme Court. This is a financial deal you're making with somebody and part of the contract was the chairman gets to stay unless he does something wrong. Well, Moses was careful not to do anything wrong. And it also would continue. You would get the bond for the Triborough Bridge, but rather than pay off the Triborough Bridge, he would build another project. It would give him the right to continually build this chain of events. And so he had this massive pot of money from all these initially nickels and dimes, Brazil made up a lot of money in the '30s and '40s and '50s and '60s, to spend more money and build more bridges and build more roads, um, and that's where he had his power. It was... And the Wall Street, the big business, loved him because they're issuing the bonds. The unions loved him 'cause they're paying the investors. Now what Caro says is that Moses allowed the investors an extra quarter percent, I think a quarter percent or half percent on the bonds, but they all sold out, you know, so everybody was happy. (laughs) Um, and, you know, was that crooked? It wasn't really illegal, but it's the way th- people do that today. If you're issuing a bond, you gotta figure out what interest am I gonna pay on this that will attract investors now.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel32:33

       And, and the crucial

5. 32:34 – 50:46

   The Case Against Moses Highways

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel32:34

      thing about, uh, these tales of graft is that it never was about Moses trying to get rich, right? It was always him trying to push through a project. And you can, um, there's y- I mean obviously that can be disturbing, but it is a completely different category of thing, especially when you remember that this was, like, a corrupt time in New York history, right? This was, like, after Tammany Hall and so on. So it's, it's, uh, completely different from somebody using their projects to get themselves rich. But, um, I, I, I do wanna, you know, actually talk in more detail about the, uh, the impact of these roads. So, you know, like ob- obviously we can't... The current system we have today where we just kind of treat cities as living museums, um, with NIMBYism and historical preservation, that's not optimal. But, um, uh, there, there are examples, at least if Caro is right, about Moses just throwing out, um, thousands of people carelessly, uh, you know, famously in that chapter on the one mile how Moses could have diverted one of... the Cross Bronx Expressway one mile and, uh, prevented thousands of people from getting needlessly evicted. Uh, but so I'm just gonna, like, list off a few criticisms of his highway building and then you can respond to them, um, in any order you want. Um, so one of the main criticisms that, uh, Caro makes is that Moses refused to add mass transit to his highways, which would have helped deal with the traffic problem and the car problem and all these other problems, at a time when getting the right-of-way and doing the construction would have been much cheaper, um, and h- because of his dislike for mass transit, he just refused to do that. And also, um, the prolific building of highways contributed to, um, contributed to urban sprawl, it contribu- uh, contributed, uh, congestion, it contributed to, uh, neighborhoods getting torn apart, uh, if a highway would, you know, cross them. Um, so a, a, a whole list of criticisms of these highways. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll let you take it in, uh, any order you want.

   2. KJKenneth T. Jackson34:26

      Well, first of all, Moses' response was, "I wasn't in charge of subways. So if you think the subways deteriorated or I didn't build enough, find out who was in charge of them and blame that person. I was in charge of highways and I built those." So that's the first thing.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel34:41

      B- before you, uh, answer that, can I just, uh, ask, so on that particular point, it, it is true that he wasn't in charge of mass transit, but also he, he wasn't in charge of roads until he made himself responsible for roads, right? So if he chose to, he could have made himself responsible for mass transit and taken care of it.

   4. KJKenneth T. Jackson34:56

      Maybe, maybe. Although I think the other thing about this, putting Moses in a broader historical concept, he was swimming with the tide of history. And there was... History, when he was building, was building... Ford Motor Company and General Motors and Chrysler Corporation and building cars by the millions. It... I mean, the automobile industry in the United States was huge. People thought any kind of rail transit was obsolete and on the way out anyway, so let's just build roads. I mean, that's what the public wanted. He built what the public wanted. Um, it's not what I... Was I... Looking historically, I don't think that we did the right thing, but we needed to join the 20th century. New York could have stayed as a quaint... I don't know. Quaint is not the right word, but as a distinctly different kind of pl- place where everybody walks and... I just don't think it would have been the same kind of city, 'cause there are people who are attached to their cars in New York. And so the, the sprawl in New York, which is enormous, nobody's saying it wasn't, spreads over 31 counties, an area about as large as the state of Connecticut, about as large as The Netherlands, is metropolitan New York.... but it's still relatively, I don't wanna say compact, but everybody knows where the center is. It's not that anybody grows up in New York at 16 and thinks that the world is in some mall, you know, three miles away. They all know there is a center and that's where it is. It's called Manhattan and that's New York. And Moses didn't change that for all of his roads. There's still, in New York, a definite center with skyscrapers and everything in the middle. Um, and it's true, um, public transit did decline but, you know, those... And I like Chicago by the way, and they have a, uh, uh, rail transit from O'Hare down to Dan Ryan, not to Dan Ryan, but the JFK expressway, I think, and it works sort of. But you gotta walk a ways to get on... You gotta walk blocks to get in the middle of the expressway and catch a train there. It's not like in New York where you just go down some steps. I mean, New York subway is much bigger than Chicago and more widely used and more... And the, the key thing about New York... And so I think what Carol was trying to explain, and your question suggests this, is was Moses re- re- responsible for the decline of public transit? Well, he was building cars and roads and bridges, so in that sense, a little bit, yes. But if you look at New York compared to the rest of the United States, it used to be that maybe 20% of all the transit routers in the United States were in the New York area. Now it's 40%. So if you're looking at the United States, what you have to ex- explain is why is New York different from the rest of the United States? Why is it that, that when I was chairman of the, or president of the New York Historical Society, we had rich trustees and I would tell them, "Well, I got here on a subway" so, they would think, uh, they would say, "How do you think I got here?" Do you know what I mean? I mean, these are people who are close to billionaires and they're saying they used the subway. If you're in lower Manhattan and you're trying to get to Midtown and it's raining, it's five o'clock, you gotta be a fool to try to get in your own limousine. It isn't gonna get you there very quickly. A subway will. So there are reasons for it and I think Moses didn't destroy public transit. He, he didn't help it, but his argument was he didn't. That's, and that's, that's an important distinction, I think. Um, but he was swimming with history. He built what the public wanted. I think if he had built public transit, he would have found it tougher to build. Just for example, Cincinnati built a subway system, a tunnel all through the city. It never has opened. They built it. You can still see the holes in the ground where it's supposed to come out. By the time they built it, people weren't riding the trains anymore. And so it's there now and they don't know what to do with it. And that's 80 years ago. Um, so it's a very complicated... I don't mean to make these issues... They're much more complex than I'm speaking of. And I just think it's unfair to blame Moses for the problems of the city. I think he did as much as anybody to try to bring the city into the 21st century, which he didn't live to. But you gotta adopt, you've gotta have a hybrid model in the world now. And I think the model that America needs to follow is a model where we reduce our dependence on the cars and somehow ride buses more or use the internet more, whatever it is, but stop using so much fossil fuels so that we destroy our environment and, and New York, by far, is the most energy e- efficient place in the United States. Mainly because you live in tall buildings, you have hot floors. It doesn't really cost much to heat places 'cause you're heating the floor below you and above you and you don't have outside walls and you walk. New Yorkers are thinner. M- Many more people take buses and subways in New York than anywhere else in the United States. Not just in absolute terms. In relative terms. Um, so that, they're helping. Uh, it's probably a healthier lifestyle to walk around. Um, and I think that's... I think we're rea- rediscovering it. For example, if you come to New York between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are so many tourists in the city, I'm not making this up, that there is gridlock on the sidewalks around 5th Avenue. The police have to direct the traffic and in part, it's because a Detroit grandmother wants to bring her granddaughter to New York to see what Hud- Hudson's, which is a great department store in Detroit or in any city. Re- could be Rich's in Atlanta, uh, Fox, G. Fox in Hartford. There were, every city had these giant department... And the windows where the Santa Claus is and stuff like this. You can still go to New York and see that. You can say, "Jane, this is the way (laughs) it used to be in Detroit." Um, people ringing the bells and looking at the store windows and things like that. A mall can't recapture that. It just can't. You try, but it's not the same thing. And, um, so I think that in a way, Moses didn't not... Not only did he not destroy New York, I think he gets a little bit of credit for saving it 'cause it might have been on the way to Detroit. Uh, again, I'm not saying that it would've been Detroit 'cause Detroit's almost empty, but Baltimore. It wasn't just Bal- Cleveland, it's every place. There is nobody there anymore. And even in New York, the department stores have mostly closed, not all of them. And so it's not the same as it was 80 years ago but it's closer to it than anywhere else.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel42:16

      Okay. So, yeah, so, uh...... I'm actually very curious to get your opinion on the following question, given the fact that you are, um, a expert on New York history and, you know, you've written the encyclopedia, literally written the encyclopedia (laughs) on-

   6. KJKenneth T. Jackson42:29

      Well-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel42:29

      ... uh, New York City.

   8. KJKenneth T. Jackson42:29

      ... 800 people wrote the encyclopedia, I just took all the credit for it. (laughs)

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel42:34

      Okay. (laughs)

   10. KJKenneth T. Jackson42:34

       I was the editor-in-chief, so...

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel42:36

       Um, so I- I'm actually curious, is Caro actually right? That, I mean, you talked about the importance just earlier about counter factual history. So I'm curious if Caro is actually right about the claim that the neighborhoods through which Moses built his highways were destroyed in a way that neighborhoods which weren't touched by the highways, uh, weren't. Sorry for the confusing phrasing there. But basically, um, w- was there like a, looking back on all these neighborhoods, is there w- is there a clear counter factual negative impact for, on the neighborhoods in which Moses built his highways and bridges and so on?

   12. KJKenneth T. Jackson43:10

       Well, Moses made, I mean, Caro makes that argument mostly about, uh, East Tremont and places like that in the Bronx where the Cross-Bronx Expressway passed through. And he says this perfectly wonderful Jewish neighborhood that was not racially prejudiced and everybody was happy and not leaving, was destroyed by Moses. Well, first of all, as a historian of New York City, or for that matter any city, if a student comes to you and says, "That's what I found out." You said, "Well, you know, that runs counter to the experience of every city." So let- let's do a little more work on that. Well, first of all, if you look at the census tracts or the residential security maps of SHHA, you know it's not true. First of all, the Jews were leaving and had nothing to do with the thing. They didn't love blacks as they did. And also if you look at other Jewish where... and the Bronx was called The Jewish Burrow at the time. Those neighborhoods that weren't on the Cross-Bronx Express, they all emptied out, mostly. So the Bronx itself was a part of New York City that followed the pattern of Detroit and Baltimore and Cleveland. It's now, Bronx is now coming back but it's- it's a different place. But, um, so I- I think it's... Well, I've said this in public and I

   13. NANarrator44:23

       (laughs)

   14. KJKenneth T. Jackson44:24

       Caro wouldn't know those neighborhoods if he landed there by parachute, you know?

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel44:29

       (laughs)

   16. KJKenneth T. Jackson44:29

       They're much better than he ever said they were. You know, he acted like if you went outside near the Bronx County Courthouse you needed a wagon train.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel44:39

       (laughs)

   18. KJKenneth T. Jackson44:39

       I mean, I've taken my students there dozens of times and shown them the people, the old ladies eating on the benches and stuff like this. Nobody's mugging them. You know, he just has an outsider's view. He didn't know the places he was writing about. But, um, but I think Moses, I think Caro was right about some things. Moses was personally a jerk. You can make it stronger than that but I mean, he was not your friendly grandfather. He was, uh, arrogant. He was self-centered. He thought he knew the truth and you don't. He, um, was vindictive, uh, ruthless, uh, but some of those were good, you know. You know, now he would, his strategies, his strategies in some were good. He made people building a- a beach or a building feel like you're building a cathedral. "You're building something great and I'm gonna pay you for it. And let's- let's make it good. Let's make it as best as we can." That itself was a real trick. How do you get people to think of their jobs as more than a job, as something else? And even a beach or a wall or something like that, to say it's good, and he also paid them, so that's important that he does that, and he's- he's making improvements. He said he was improving things for the people. And, you know, it's not every... He... I don't know if you wanna talk about Jane Jacobs-

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel46:09

       Yes.

   20. KJKenneth T. Jackson46:09

       ... who was his nemesis.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel46:11

       Yeah.

   22. KJKenneth T. Jackson46:12

       And- and I tend to vote with Jane Jacobs. Jane Jacobs and I agree on a lot of things, or did before she died a few years ago. But, um, they didn't... Jane Jacobs saw the city as intricate stores and people living and walking and knowing each other and eyes on the street and all these kind of... Moses didn't see that at all. He saw the city as a traffic problem. How do we tear this down and build something big and get people the hell outta here? And that was a mistake. Um, Moses made mistakes. Um, but, uh, but what Moses was doing was what everybody in the United States was doing, just not as big and not as ruthless and not as quick. It was not like Moses- Moses built a different kind of world that exists in Kansas City. That's exactly what they did in Kansas City or every other city. Blow the damn roads to the black neighborhoods, uh, build the expressway interchanges. My hometown of Memphis, criss-crossed with big streets. Those neighborhoods gone. Th- they're even more extensive in places like Memphis and Kansas City and New Orleans than they are in New York, 'cause New York builds relatively fewer of them. It's still huge what he built but- but you would not know from the power broker that Los Angeles exists. Actually, Los Angeles was building freeways too. Or he says that New York, uh, had more federal money than an- than any other city. Well, not true. I've had students working on Chicago and Chicago's getting more money per person- per person than New York for some of these projects. So some of the claims, no doubt he got those from Moses' own records, but you know, you got, if you're gonna write a book like this you gotta know what's going on other places. Anyway, let's go back to your questions.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel48:10

       (laughs) No, no, I- I actually was, that was one of the things I was actually gonna ask you about so I was glad to get your opinion on that.You know, actually when preparing for this interview and trying to, like, learn more about the— th— the impact of these different projects, I was, like, trying to find, um, the economic literature on the value of these highways. And so the— there was, um, there was a— a National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Morgan Foy, or at least a digest by Morgan Foy, where he says that, um, i- uh- obviously he's talking about the gains, economic gains from highways and he says, um, the gains tend to be largest in areas where roads connect large economic hubs where few alternative routes exist. And he goes on to say, "Two segments near New York City have welfare benefits exceeding $500 million a year. Expanding the Long Island Expressway between— uh, had an estimated economic value of $719 million," which I think was, um, I think was Moses. Um, and he says, "Of the top 10 segments with the highest rate of return, seven are in New York City area." So it turns out that seven of the top 10 most valuable highway segments in America are in New York. And l- l- reading that, it makes me, um, suspect that, like, there must ha- uh, I mean, the way Caro paints Moses' , uh, planning process, and it's just kind of very impulsive and feelings based, um, and almost in some cases like out of malice towards, um, poor people, but, like, given that, uh, century later, it seems that (laughs) many of the most valuable tracts of highways were planned and built exactly how Moses envisioned, um, i- it makes you think that there was some sort of, like, actual intelligent, um, deliberation and, uh, thought that was put into where they were placed.

   24. KJKenneth T. Jackson49:55

       I think that's true, and I'm not saying that they don't have a- that auto building didn't have an economic impact. That's what Moses was building for.

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel50:03

       Yeah.

   26. KJKenneth T. Jackson50:03

       You know? He would- he would probably endorse that idea.

   27. DPDwarkesh Patel50:07

       Yeah.

   28. KJKenneth T. Jackson50:07

       And I think that what- what we're looking at now in the 21st century is the high value put on places that Moses literally thought were a slum. He was gonna run an expressway from Brooklyn through lower Manhattan to New Jersey and knock down all these buildings in Greenwich Village that people love now, love. I mean, you couldn't... Movie stars, people crowd into those neighborhoods to live and th- he saw it as a slum. Well, Moses was simply wrong and, uh, and C- Carol puts him to task for that. I think that's

6. 50:46 – 1:03:06

   NIMBYism

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson50:46

      true.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel50:47

      Okay. Uh, Professor Jackson, now I want to discuss how the process of city planning and building projects has changed since Moses' time. We spent, uh, some good amount of time actually discussing what it was like, uh, what Moses actually did in his time. But, um, I mean, uh, last year, I believe, you wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal talking about how the, uh, 27 story building in, um, in Manhattan was still- was put in limbo because, uh, the parking lot which we would replace was part of a historic district. Um, so yeah. W- what is it like to actually build a skyscraper or a highway or a bridge or anything of that sort in today's New York City?

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson51:30

      Well, I do think in- in the larger context, it's probably fair to say it's tougher to build in New York City than any o- any other city. I mean, yeah, you know, a little precious suburb, you may not have to build a skyscraper, but, I mean, as far as the city is concerned, there'll be more opposition in New York than anywhere else. Uh, and they're just more- i- it's- it's more dense, so just to unload and load stuff to build a building, how do you do that? You know, you gotta... Trucks have to park on the street and everything is more complicated and thus more expensive. Um, I think a major difference between Robert Moses' time and our own, in Robert Moses' time, historic preservation was as yet little known and little understood and little supported. And the view generally was, um, building is good, roads are good, houses are good, uh, and they're all on the way to a more- more modern and better world. We don't have the same kind of fa- faith in the future that they did. We kind of say, "You know, we kind of like it like it is. Let's just sit on it." So Moses- so I think we should say that Moses had an easier time of it than he would have had he lived today. It still wasn't an easy time, but easier than today.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel53:03

      Yeah. Well, actually, can you talk more about what that change in, uh, I guess philosophy has been since then? That- I feel like that's been one of the themes of this podcast to, like, uh, see how our, uh, cultural attitude towards progress and technology have changed.

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson53:18

      Well, I think one reason why The Powerbroker, Robert Caro's famous book, received such popular acclaim is it fits in with book readers' opinions today, which is old is better. I mean, also you gotta think about New York City. If you say it's a pre-war apartment, you mean it's a better apartment. You know, everything- you know, the walls are solid plaster, not fiberboard, stuff like that. So old has a reverence in New York that it doesn't have in Japan. In Japan, they tear down houses every 15 years, so it's a whole different thing. We- we tend to, in this new country, new culture, we tend to value oldness in some places and especially in a place that's old like New York City. I mean, most Americans don't realize that New York is not only the most dense American city and the largest, but also really the oldest. I mean, I know there's St. Augustine, but that's- that's taking the concept of what's a city to pretty extreme things and then there's Jamestown in Virginia, but...... there's nobody there. Literally, there's nobody there and, uh, and then where the pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, Plymouth Plantation, that's totally rebuilt as a kind of a theme park. So for a place that's a city... And Santa Fe, a little bit, um, in New Mexico but it was a wide place on the road until after World War II. So the places that would be old. So if you like cities, New York is really old and it's never valued history but the historic preservation movement here is very strong.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel54:56

      What is the reason for its re- resurgence be- is it just that... Because, I mean, it's- it's had a big impact on many cities, right? Like, I'm in San Francisco right now and obviously, like, you can't tear down one of these Victorian houses to build, uh, um, build the housing that, like, the city massively needs. Why- wh- why have we, like, gained a reverence for anything that was built before, like, 80 years or something?

   7. KJKenneth T. Jackson55:18

      Well, I- I'm surprised because just think of the two most expensive places in the United States. It could change a little bit from year to year but usually San Francisco and New York.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel55:29

      Right.

   9. KJKenneth T. Jackson55:30

      And really, if you want to make it more affordable, if you want to drop the price of popsicles on your block, sell more popsicles. Have more people be selling popsicles-

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel55:39

       Yeah.

   11. KJKenneth T. Jackson55:39

       ... and the price will fall. But somehow they say they're going to build luxury housing when actually if you build any housing, it'll put downward pressure on prices, even super luxury. But anyway, most Americans don't understand that. So they oppose change and especially so in New York and San Francisco on the basis that ch- change means gentrification. And of course, there has been a lot of gentrification. In World War II or right after, San Francisco was a working class city. It really was. And huge numbers of short and longshoremen lived there. Now, Los An- I mean San Francisco's become the headquarters really in Silicon Valley but headquarters city of the tech revolution and it's become very expensive, um, and very homeless. It's very complex, uh, not easy to understand even if you're in the middle of it.

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel56:32

       Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So if- if we could ga- get a Ro- Robert Moses back again today, what major mega project do you think New York needs today that, uh, a Moses-like figure could build?

   13. KJKenneth T. Jackson56:45

       Well, if you think really broadly and you take climate change seriously, as I think most people do, probably to build some sort of a infrastructure to prevent rising water from sinking the city. It's doable. You'd have to... Like New Orleans. In order to save New Orleans, they had to flood Mississippi and some other places. So usually there is a downside somewhere, but you could... That would be a huge project to maybe build a bridge, not a bridge, a land bridge from Brooklyn, New York to Manhattan to prevent water coming in from the ocean because New York is on the ocean. Um, and to think of something like that's really big. You know, some of the other big infrastructure projects, like they're talking about another tunnel under the river, Hudson River, from New Jersey to New York. The problem with that is there are already too many cars in Manhattan. Anything that makes it easier to bring cars into Manhattan because... You know, if you've not been to New York, you don't really understand this but there's no place for anything and if you bring more cars in, what are you going to do with them? If you build parking garages for all the cars that could come in the city, then you'd be building all over the whole city and there'd be no reason to come here because there'd all be parking garages or parking places. So New York City simply won't work if you reduce the density or you get rid of underground transportation 'cause it's all about people moving around underneath the streets and not taking up space as they do it. So it won't work. It won't work and of course, it's not the only city. Tokyo wouldn't work either or lots of cities in the world won't work increasingly without not just public transportation but underground public transportation where you can get it out of the way of traffic and stuff like that. Moses probably could have done that. He probably... he wouldn't have loved it as much as he loved Bridges because he wanted you to see what he built and there was an argument in The Powerbroker but he didn't really want the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel built because he wanted to build a bridge that everybody could see. So he may not have done it with such enthusiasm but I actually believe that Moses was first and foremost a builder. He really wanted to build things, change things. If you said, "We'll pay you to build tunnels," I think he would have built tunnels. Who knows? He wasn't a... He never was offered that. That wasn't the time in which he lived.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel59:26

       Yeah. Okay. Uh, and then I'm curious if you think that today to get rid of, I guess, the red tape and the NIMBYism, would it just be enough for one man to accumulate as much influence as Moses had and then to push through some things or does there need to be some sort of systemic reform? Because when Moses took power, of course, there was al- also that Tammany Hall machine that he had to run through, right? Is that just what- what's needed today to get through the, uh, you know, the bureaucracy or i- is something more needed?

   15. KJKenneth T. Jackson59:55

       Well, I- I don't think Robert Moses with all of his talents and personality, I don't think he could do in the 21st century what he did in the middle of the 20th century. I think he would have done a lot, maybe more than anybody else, but also I think his methods, his really bullying messages really, really... He bullied, he bullied people including powerful people. I don't think that would work quite as easily today but I do think we need it todayAnd I think even today, you know, we find even now we have, in New York, just the beginnings of, um, leftists, I'm thinking of AOC, the woman who led the campaign against Amazon in New York, saying, "Well, we need some development." If we wanna make housing more affordable, somebody's gotta build something. It's not gonna become more affordable because you say you want affordable housing. You gotta build affordable housing, and especially, you gotta build more of it. So we have to allow people, we have to overrun the, overturn the NIMBYism to say, well, uh, eh, even today, for, for all of our concern about environmental change, we have to work together. I mean, in some ways we have to quote, we have to believe that we're in some ways in the same boat. And it won't work if we put more people on, in the boat, but don't make the boat any bigger. And, uh...

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:23

       Yeah. Uh, when people discuss Moses and the power accumulated, they often talk about the fact that he took so much power away from democratically elected officials and that he centralized so much power in himself. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, obviously The Powerbroker talks a great deal about the harms of that kind of centralization, but I'm curious, having studied the history of New York, what are the benefits if there can be one coordinated cohesive plan for the entire city? So if there's one person who's designing all the bridges, all the highways, all the parks, is something more made possible that can't be possible with, like, multiple different branches and people have their own unique visions? I don't know if that question makes sense, but...

   17. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:02:02

       That's a big question, and, eh, you've got to put a lot of trust into the grand planner, especially if a massive area of 20, 25 million people, uh, bigger than a city is what you're really talking about. Now, I, I think, I think that in some ways, we've gone too far in the ability to obstruct change, to stop it. And w- we need change. Change, I mean, h- houses, houses deteriorate, and roads deteriorate, sewers deteriorate. We have to build into our system the ability to improve them, and we harden, we have little... Now, in, in New York, we respond to emergencies. All of a sudden, a water main breaks, the street collapses, and then they stop everything, stop the water main break and repair the street and whatever it is and do... Meanwhile, in 100 other places, it's leaking, it's just not leaking enough to make the road collapse. But the problem is there every day, every minute.

7. 1:03:06 – 1:11:58

   Is Progress Cyclical

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:03:06

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:06

      Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I'm curious, like, as a professor, I mean, you, you've, like, studied American history. Do you just see this as a cyclical thing where you have periods where maybe one person has too much power to periods where there's, like, dispersed betocracy and sclerosis and then you're just gonna go through these cycles? Or h- h- how do you see the, in the grand context of things, how do you see the, like, where we are, where we were during Moses, and where we might be in the future?

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:03:33

      Well, you're right to say that much of life is cyclical, and there's a swing back and forth, but having said that, I think that a person like Robert Moses is unusual. Partly because, you know, he might have gone on to become a po- a hedge fund person or... I mean, they didn't have hedge funds when he was around, but you know, new competitor to Goldman Sachs. I mean, he could have done a lot of things. Maybe been a general. He, he wanted to have power and control, and I think that's harder to accumulate now. We have, we have too much, too much power in demos- if you can demonstrate, you can stop anything. We, we love demonstrations in the United States. We respect them. We see it as a visible expression of our democracy, is your ability to get on the streets and block the streets. But, you know, still, you have to get to work. I mean, at some point of the day, you gotta do something. And, um, yeah, Hitler could have, Hitler could have done a lot of things if he wanted to. You know, he could have made Berlin into... But, you know, if you have all the power, Hitler had a lot of it, if he turned into Berli- Berlin into a colossal city, he was gonna make it like Washington, but times five. Washington has already got its own issues. You know, the buildings are too big, government buildings don't have eyes, don't have life on the street and stuff like this. Somebody like Hitler would destroy it forever, you know, because you build a monumental city that's not for people. And, um, I think that was probably one of Moses' weak points, is unlike a Jane Jacobs, who saw people, Moses didn't see people. He saw bridges, he saw highways, he saw tunnels, he saw rivers. He saw the city as a giant traffic problem. Jane Jacobs, who was a person without portfolio most of her life, except of her own powers of judgment and persuasion, she thought, "Well, how does the sh- what, what does the shoe repair man got to do with the grocery store, got to do with the school, got to do with something else?" She saw the, she saw what Moses didn't see. She saw the intricacies of a city, he saw a giant landscape. She saw the, the block, just the block.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:08

      Y- yeah. There's a, there's, like, a common trope about socialists and communists which is that they, that they love humanity in the abstract but they hate people as individuals, um, and it's like, I guess, (laughs) one way to, like, describe Robert Moses. Uh, it actually kind of reminds me of, uh, I, I have a, one of my, one, one of my relatives is a doctor and he's, um, he's not exactly a people person-... and he says, like, you know, "I hate, like, actually having to talk to the patients about, like... (laughs) and, you know, like, asking them questions. I just like the actual detective work of, like, uh, who, w- what is going on, looking at the charts and figuring out, uh, doing the diagnosis." A- are you optimistic about New York? Do you think that in the, uh, in t- continuing towards the end of the, uh, 21st century and into the 22nd century, it will still be the capital of the world? Or w- w- what do you think is the future of the city?

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:06:54

      Well, The Economist, which is a (papers rustling) major publication that comes out of England, recently predicted that London and New York would be, in 2100, what they are today, (laughs) which is the capitals of the world. And London is not, is not really a major city in terms of population. It's probably under 10 million, much smaller than New York and way smaller than Tokyo. But London has a cosmopolitan heterogeneous atmosphere within the rule of law. What London and New York both offer, tch, which Shanghai doesn't or Hong Kong doesn't at the moment is a system so if you disagree, you're not gonna disappear. You know what I mean? It's like there's some level of guarantee that per- personal safety is sacred and you can, and you can say what you want. I think that's valuable. That's very valuable. And I think the fact that it's open to newcomers, you can't, you can't find a minority so minority that they don't have a presence in New York, and a pl- a physical presence, I mean. If you're from Estonia, which has got fewer people than New York suburbs, I mean individual New York suburbs, but there's an Estonian house, there's Estonian restaurants, there's... You know, India, Pakistan, every place has, has got, has got an ethnic presence, that if you want it, you can have it. You want to merge with the larger community, l- merge with it. That's fine. But if you want to celebrate your special circumstances, it's been said that New York is everybody's second home, 'cause you know if you come to New York, you can find people just like yourself and, and speaking your language and eating your food and going to your, your religious institution. I think that's gonna continue and I think it what makes, not only what makes the United States unusual, there are few other places like it. Switzerland is like it, but the thing about Switzerland that's different from the United States is there are parts of Switzerland that are, most of it's Swiss German and parts of it are Swit- French, but they stay in their own places. You know what I mean? So they speak French here and they speak German there. You know, Arizona and Maine are not that different demographically in the United States. Uh, everybody has shuffled the deck several times. And so I think that's what a- and that's what makes New York unique, and London too, Paris a little bit. You can go to the Paris underground, you don't even know what language you're listening to. I think to be a great city in the 21st century... And by the way, the... often, the Texas cities are very diverse. San Francisco, LA, very diverse. It's not just New York. New York kind of stands out because it's bigger and because the neighborhoods are more distinct. Anybody can see them. I think that's... And that's what Robert Moses didn't spend any time thinking about. H- he wasn't concerned with who was eating at that restaurant, wasn't important, or even if there was a restaurant, you know? Whereas now, the move, the slow drift back towards cities... And I'm predicting that the pandemic will not have a permanent influence. I mean, a- the pandemic is huge and it's affected the way people work and live and shop and have recreation. So I'm not trying to blow it off like something else. But I think in the long run, we are social animals. We want to be with each other. We need each other. Especially if you're young, you wanna be with potential romantic partners. But even other people are drawn. Like, just a few days ago, there was a horrible tragedy in Seoul, Korea. That's because 100,000 young people are drawn to each other. They could have had more room to swing their arms, but they wanted to crowd into this one alley 'cause that's where other people were. They wanted to go where other people were. And, um, that's a lot about the appeal of cities today. We've, we've been in cars and we've been on interstate highways and at the end of the day, we're, we're a l- we're almost like cats. We wanna get together at night and sleep on each other or with each other and, uh, I think that's the ultimate... It's not for everybody. Most people would maybe rather live in a small town or on the top of a mountain, but there's a percentage of people, let's call it 25%, who really want to be part of the tumble in the tide and want to be things mixed up and they will always want to be in a place like New York. There are other places, San Francisco, Boston, you know, Philadelphia a little bit. There are not many in the United States, but in Europe, Copenhagen, you know. They're not... Copenhagen's not a big city, neither is Prague, but they have urbanity. New York has urbanity and I think we don't celebrate urbanity as much as we might, the pure

8. 1:11:58 – 1:20:03

   Friendship with Caro

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:11:58

      joy of being with others.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:12:00

      Yep. Yep. Uh, but I'm curious if you ever got a chance to, um, talk to Robert Caro himself about, uh, Moses at some point.

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:12:09

      Robert Caro and I were friends. In fact, uh, when The Powerbroker received an award, the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, uh, it turned out we lived near each other in the Bronx and I drove him home and we became friends and social friends. Um, and, um-... I happened to be with him on the day that Robert Moses died. We were with our wives eating out in a neighborhood called Arthur Avenue, the real Little Italy of New York. It's in the Bronx. Um, it's also called Belmont. But, um, then on the 100th anniversary of Moses's birth, I think in 1989, I was asked to give the keynote speech at a conference at Hofstra University on Moses. And, uh, Caro was also invited to be a speaker, maybe another keynote speaker. And there I said, and I still stand by this, that The Powerbroker, I learned more from it than any book I ever read 'cause it's such an enormous topic. I learned more from it and I wish I had written it myself so that my name was on it rather than his. And I think it was the best book I ever read. That may be a slight exaggeration but just slight. It's an in- it's an incredible achievement. But having said that, I said it's, it's got a thousand errors, you know, just small errors. I mean, in broad strokes it's correct. Robert Moses had more power than any urban figure in American history. He built incredible monuments that the city needs. Uh, he was ruthless and arrogant and honest. Um, that- that's h- that's a big story right there, that- that's probably true. But in all the little stories about the temperature in the swimming pools, about the destruction of p-public transit, about the destruction of, of the Bronx with the Cross-Bronx Expressway, about the building the bridges too low so that buses couldn't get to the beaches, he's just wrong. I mean, it's just in that way. Wasn't that way, isn't that way. And all he had to do was look at some different sources, you know that in that they were doing some of the same things in LA or Chicago, they just weren't as famous as New York. I mean, that's more or less what it was. Um, but I think, um, I- I still feel that way. I still wish I had written the book, um, wish my name was on it even with all those mistakes. I've had taught for a half a century and more New York City history at Columbia University, and I've had dozens of students write term papers on one or another aspect of Caro's book. I can never remember a single one coming back saying, "Oh, Caro got it right." You know, they would go back to the same source and stuff like this and say, you know, "This is not what... This is not the way he said it was." Now they may be smaller, but it was generally that way. They didn't celebrate it. They... I think he'd made up his mind what he was gonna argue before he started it and... Moses was a jerk. For example, he... Think of the issues now with President Biden and his son Hunter, you know, and all the grief he's catching about his son or people with, uh, you know, having... hiring... My wife is telling me not to go down this road. But, um, but, but Moses is a- attacked in the book because he's not good enough to his brother, you know. Um, he should have done more for his brother than he did. Well, you know, so he, he didn't give his brother a job and, uh... So I'm just saying there's all these little things that you can come to, um, about different neighborhoods and things like that. But then I think Caro was right that Moses, the biggest builder of cities in the 20th century, the builder of the greatest city in the world, didn't like it. That's incredible. He didn't actually like the place he was designing. He wanted everybody to get out, go... It's better, it's better in the suburbs, better if you have a house, better if you have a garage, better if you have a car in the front. That's better than the Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens, you know what I mean? Whereas, again, his opponent, Jane Jacobs... our people now... And one of the greatest changes now than when Moses, when Caro was writing Moses is people wanted to all have a car in New York, everybody have a car. Teachers when they were 16 years old, they wanted to have a driver's license more than they wanted to have sex. Get me the car. Now big percentage of young Americans are skipping the driver's license. They don't care as much. We're moving into a different time and, uh, where that's gonna lead us, I'm not sure, but I think we're ready to walk more for health reasons and all sorts of reasons, but Moses did not see it. Moses never drove, but he created the world for drivers.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:17:20

      Yeah. Um, so some people might, uh, object to this defense of Moses by saying like, "Listen, whenever he does something well, we give him credit here. But then whenever he does something badly, we just say, 'Oh, well, he was just swimming with the tide of history. There were other cities that were doing it worse.'" So we're doing, uh, you know, we're, like, doing whataboutism on the negative side of Moses' legacy, but then, uh, we're, we're, like, h- happy to let him take credit for the good things. I- it's kind of a double standard. H- how would you respond to that?

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:17:51

      Well, I understand what you're saying and I can sympathize with it. But I think most of the things... And let's, let's take the Cross-Bronx Expressway as an egregious example of something that Robert Caro or his... or Moses' critics would say, "God, all these people, tens of thousands of people paid a price. Their, their lives were uprooted." But I just can't imagine you would say, "We can't have a Cross-Bronx..." I mean, you know, it could have been two blocks this way or two blocks that way, that's a different question, um, and we could talk about that too. But, but I think we have to have it. And, and I think the parks, uh, I think the bridges... The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge transformed Staten Island. It's... The history of Staten Island is before and after 1964. They had to take into account the curvature of the earth that bridge was so long.... at the time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It's been surpassed in Europe since then, but a big bridge. Um, eh, that would be, that would be a lifetime's achievement. If you built the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, this gigantic, gorgeous entrance to New York Harbor, that's, that's a lifetime achievement. For Moses, it's one of a list of about 50 things. You know? You don't even think about the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and Robert Moses. It's just not... Yeah, he did it. So what? He did lots of other big things too. Um, I think it's the scale, and the scale was not human. It was totally on a different scale, and with that comes a lot of criticism 'cause, as he would say himself, in order to make an omelet, you have to break eggs. Eh, no other way to do it. (laughs) And he would say, "I have t- I had to make, I had to do it." This, this was his answer. "Uh, uh, in order to build a great public s- (burps) event or thing, I have to hurt some people. That's just the way it is." And I think, (sighs) and we don't wanna... The way we live now, we don't wanna hurt anybody. You can't, you can't run a city or a country that way. You can't. Um,

9. 1:20:03 – 1:26:51

   Moses the Longtermist?

   1. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:20:03

      nothing will change.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:20:05

      Yeah, I've, uh, I've had, uh, uh, recently a lot of guests who have been, um, advocating for this phil- uh, philosophical view, uh, that's called long-termism, which is basically the idea that we should take the interest of future generations and consider them equally with the interest of people alive today, um, as a way to, like, emphasize, for example, that, you know, people who live, like, thousands of years from now, we, we should, uh, take their interest seriously. And one of the, um... I guess if you take this kind of view that basically we should just care about, uh, progeny more... You know, it's interesting. There's a part in The Powerbroker where they're talking about the, you know, the Cross- Bronx Expressway through East Tremont and Moses is getting, um, opposition from, uh, some elected official. And Moses responds by saying, "You know, you, you make a habit out of pointing out that I'm not democratically elected while you are, but the advantage of me not being democratically elected is that I can build projects that might not, uh, be the favorite thing for the people alive now, but will benefit the city for generations and centuries to come." Um, there's obviously, like, (laughs) a lot of arrogance there and it's like, well, if that's true, right? But, um, to the extent that that is true and it is in many cases, right? Like, all these bridges you're talking about and all these highways, they are, they're still standing today and in wide use. Um, they, you know, it kinda changes how you think about him g- like, given all the omelet-breaking that, or the egg-breaking that had to happen at the time, it's still the fact that, like, we can ex- uh, we can, for hundreds of years, we'll get to use the things he built, right? So, uh, y- yeah. Um, I'm curious, how did, how did Caro... So you mentioned you were, you were with him, uh, when you found out that Moses had died. How did you react? W- was he sad about it or...

   3. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:21:49

      Well, he was being interviewed. I just remember being stunned at the restaurant. We were eating in a restaurant in the Bronx and they brought a telephone to him. I never seen anybody have a telephone brought to them. You know, that was way before cell phones and everything else. It was 1989 or something like that. Um, I don't remember the exact year, but it was somewhere like that. Um, but we were, we were, we were, we were friends when tha- when he died. Maybe it was 1981. Anyway, whatever year it was, um, it was after he qu- I criticized him in public and The New York Times quoted me, but they didn't quote that I thought it was the best book I'd ever read, I wish I had written it. They did quote that I said it was full of mistakes. That's what The New York Time- that's what he read. He didn't hear my speech. And so... But I'm s- I'm sorry. I'm, I've done that... Don't want to have enemies with anyone, but I have regard for the book and have regard from his ability to do research. That's what's amazing about The Powerbroker is his ability and interest in going back and interviewing his third grade teacher, you know, and stuff like that, and finding that out. That's way more than most of us are willing to do.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel1:22:58

      But what i- what was his reaction when he found out that Moses died?

   5. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:23:03

      Uh, you know, that was, that was not unexpected. He was 90 years old at the time and remember, this is 30 years ago, more than that. Not many people live to be 90 and he was a... Well, he swam. He was an athlete. He was a swimmer. Um, swam in the ocean in his 80s. He was quite a person.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel1:23:25

      Yeah, yeah. Uh, there was... There's a part in the, uh, in Caro's memoir where he talks about learning from his, um, from, you know, Moses' former aides, who are now friends with Caro, how they would tell him that, now that he had lost his power, he was just in his, um, in his, you know, in his house all day, just like, looking at all his plans and writing down more ideas for, "There should be another highway here." Here and so on. And, you know, just kind of, like, um, impotently making new, you know, new ideas and so on. And Caro says that, uh, just like that hearing about that scene, um, thi- this master builder just kind of, just having nothing to do really, it made him want to cry and, uh, he, despite the fact that he was, he, he had documented all the harm that Moses had done. So it was, like, really interesting, uh, really interesting.

   7. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:24:16

      Well, Moses had a phenomenal amount of power and he loses it all in a short order and that's gotta be tough. Really tough. And Moses did write a response to The Powerbroker, which was published in The New Yorker about 1975, which is a long response saying, of course, that Caro had it all wrong and da- da- da- that your listeners might wanna go to... It's available, I'm sure, in The New Yorker.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel1:24:48

      Yeah. Uh, yeah, actually I, I thought, um... I, I don't know what your reaction to the response was. I read it, and I thought that Moses, um, at least... I thought that Moses kind of vindicated Caro's description of his personality because it was very ad hominem, it wasn't specific. Um, I'm sure there were a lot of errors, as you say, but then Car- uh, Moses just says... I mean, he wrote 8,000 words but he, like, actually documents very few of the supposed errors that he claims Caro's making. And, um, the ones he does document are, like, minor ones, not the major ones that had to, like... That, that were about his major public works. It was just, like, small little details. But yeah, I, I don't know what your reaction was to that response.

   9. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:25:28

      Well, I, I think you're very perceptive. I think his response was rambling, wordy, not particular. I think he probably could have taken Caro apart, but he didn't. He didn't say, "This, page so-and-so, you said this." You know, "This is wrong." Uh, yeah, he didn't. And he also... Moses didn't have people around him, like maybe Hitler didn't or Trump or somebody else, to say, "Boss, you're wrong here. You gotta reword this. You don't mean it the way you said it."

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel1:26:01

       Yeah, exactly.

   11. KJKenneth T. Jackson1:26:01

       And that... All, it's... And also, the, the quality of the response was poor enough that he needed, he needed assistance. He needed a smart, or three or four smart people to say, "Put it this way. You gotta..." Or, "Give it, go give this example," or do something else. But still, it tells you something about Moses, the response. And also, the way Moses kind of held grudges, and so he blames, uh, The New Yorker, and he blames Knopf, Alfred Knopf Publishers because you're in cahoots with C- C- Caro, so you're all damned and going to hell, um, rather than just talking about Caro. So, uh, maybe that's just the way he looked at the world in his time, you know. You gotta find out who's got the levers of power and then go after them. The rest of the people don't matter.

Episode duration: 1:33:17