[SMITH]

In a 1998 speech at a Brookings Institution-sponsored conference on the future of American cities, Robert Caro offered what must surely be one of the clearest statements of the purpose of a city. In the end, Caro concluded, “a city has to be a home to its people.” This is to say that cities must nurture and protect, validate and anchor, and ultimately, be responsive to the needs of their residents. Although in many places this idea is more codified aspiration rather than tangible reality, very few today would disagree with this sentiment. However, this wasn’t always the case. “The Power Broker” makes clear, too, that what matters more in shaping cities is not how many people agree with this notion, but who disagrees and how much power they have to assert their own priorities over the values of community.

“The Power Broker” as its title suggests is a book about power. It is about how power warps both the processes and outcomes of urban development. In “The Power Broker,” we see vividly that political and governmental power is the difference between urban design dreams deferred and dreams realized. We also see power’s corrrupting and destructive influence. “The Power Broker” makes clear that an urban planner without power is an idle dreamer, and that an urban planner with too much power can be a nightmare.

Through a study of the life of Robert Moses, the long-time Commissioner of multiple parks, transportation, and planning-related public agencies for both New York City and State, “The Power Broker” presents us with a grand tour of the mid-20th century history of urban development in New York City and State. For today’s planners, the example of Robert Moses is significant because he is quite simply the most dominant force in shaping the form of New York City today. Moses, in Caro’s account, is a two-headed genius: one part of his genius was for urban design, the second part was an unsurpassed instinct for the acquisition of political and institutional power. Caro’s account of Moses’ strategic and tactical maneuvers to build and use, what was the supreme political and bureaucratic machine operating in New York City for most of Moses’ 40-year tenure, reads like Napoleon at Jena. Caro’s Moses also, despite his then-image as a popular, incorruptible government reformer, is revealed as a moral monster, an ethical disaster, and responsible for at least two of the greatest blunders in New York City planning history — the bigoted and criminally unjust implementation of urban renewal in New York City and an entirely Moses-driven push to cover New York City in parkways and expressways at the expense of rapid transit. The story of Moses’ spectacular early successes at overwhelming truculent Long Island land barons to develop the world’s most extensive system of public beaches, such as Jones Beach, is enough to make a planner’s heart sing. The story of Moses’ forced and reckless relocation of over 200,000 (mostly Jewish, Black, and Puerto-Rican) New Yorkers are enough to drive a planner to hard drink.

Ultimately, the book’s coverage of Moses’ rise-and-fall biographical arc serves the purpose of placing an intense spotlight on the question of who decides a city’s future. Moses’ monopoly on institutional, political, and financial power enabled him to proceed alone and unchecked in changing, for many, New York City from a home to a malevolent canvas for Moses’ architectural dreams. Still, advocates of participatory planning methods should not feel wholly affirmed by “The Power Broker’s” morality tale. Moses began his career as a brilliant urban reformer-dreamer with a radical vision for using New York City’s land assets in new and appealing ways. It was an early disastrous political encounter with democracy’s inherent difficulty in Getting Things Done that soured his good government idealism, and set him on the path to democracy-subverting institutional self-aggrandizement.

“The Power Broker” is revelatory. Caro’s virtuoso story-telling brings this exhaustive and intricate biographical history alive and his deep reporting argues as effectively as any expert litigator for the book’s conclusions and judgments about Moses and the events he precipitated. I am convinced this is one of the greatest books of any genre I will ever read. As a self-acknowledged planner-dreamer, for me, it certainly is one of the most hauntingly important urban planning narratives I’ll ever encounter. If you’re hesitating, don’t. Get yourself a copy and read it.

UPDATE: Here’s a different take on “The Power Broker.” Another, more famous dissent from Caro’s depiction of Moses.