Both Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were mentioned during the Infrastructure 2008 presentation, however I couldn’t help but think that Robert Moses is really who we should turn to for inspiration. Robert Moses is the legendary New York Commissioner who built the Triborough Bridge and numerous other highways and bridges, rehabilitated thousands of city parks and pools, established Jones Beach on Long Island, and constructed thousands of affordable apartments, among other things. He is known as New York’s master builder.
In 1974 Robert Caro famously wrote an extremely detailed biography of Moses including an accounting of both the good and bad elements of his legacy, his political astuteness, and personal life. For decades Robert Moses was much despised for the methods he employed, summarized by an expression he used often: “You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs”. Last year, however, a retrospective exhibition held by three museums in New York City opened the door to reinterpreting his legacy.
New York’s boroughs amalgamated exactly 100 years before Toronto’s merger. In the ensuing decades New York struggled with similar infrastructure and social issues that the Toronto region is dealing with today: lack of funds to tie the new region together with infrastructure. Political leaders lacked vision, municipal bureaucracy was paralyzed by Tammany Hall, and the state legislature was beholden to upstate interests.
Robert Moses began his career as an idealistic and principled reformer – a model citizen of the progressive era – aiming to professionalize the public service. As he became more experienced he came to understand two things very well: politics and money. He invented ways to get things done by creating self-financed agencies with heavy use of tolls, and using speed and momentum to his advantage. Moses leveraged tolls and other dedicated revenue streams to borrow money, and put shovels in the ground immediately even if all financing was not complete. He knew that once a project started it would be difficult to stop.
In the GTA we are at the point where many lovely, well illustrated plans are on the books. What we lack are agencies and tools that are endowed with financial capacity and use momentum strategically. We typically have agents that expend great energy clawing for general revenues, and constrained by the environmental assessment process. Where projects are underway, such as the West Don Lands, we do see evidence that some of Robert Moses’ tactics have been employed.
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