Robert Moses and Urban Planning

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             Moses knew that he had to recapture the middle class to be successful because suburbs were growing very quickly. This urban sprawl would destroy city life and would leave a huge divide between the rich and the poor. This was in direct contrast to Howard's plan for Garden Cities, which would be a self-contained unit that would be capped at a certain population and then linked to the next town by rail. This left very little room for growth within the towns and was not appealing in America because of the increasing popularity of the car. He was also determined to make the city a world capitol both institutionally and culturally. He provided opportunities for the Lincoln Center and Coliseum and created open spaces amongst his towers for parking lots and low-level shops to become the foreground of the much larger towers. .
             While Moses was essentially gentrifying areas, since any new structure, no matter how cheap, would be out of reach for many previous residents of slums, he still knew how to get the public on his side. He included communal areas and presented his projects very well, but relied only on expert advice and opinions essentially ignoring the public, further proving his focus on the future of the city. He learned to modify his projects in response to critics but as Henry Heald reassured Moses that he "learned long ago that no slum clearance project could ever be 100% popular, " he held his position that public works were an engine of economic development and that they ultimately make economic sense. He knew he had to address the fact that he was displacing people but that caused projects to move at a much slower pace. Racial discrimination also made it harder for nonwhites to find other housing, resulting in them moving into another slum. Title I was designed to clear the slums, not create public housing, but Moses began combining the two simultaneously to allow for an easier transition for those displaced by the clearing.