Key points
- Moses transformed New York over four decades without being elected to any office, with parks, bridges and highways.
- His expressways cut through neighbourhoods such as the South Bronx and displaced hundreds of thousands, mostly poor residents.
- Caro shows how Moses's power escaped accountability and why his model fell to Jane Jacobs and neighbourhood resistance.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), by Robert Caro, is the critical biography of Robert Moses, the man who transformed New York in the twentieth century without ever being elected to anything. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and more than a thousand pages long, it narrates his rise as an all-powerful planner, responsible for bridges, parks, highways and beaches that defined the landscape of the city and of Long Island, and explores how the same man who modernised New York contributed to its social fragmentation, fostered segregation and deepened urban inequality.
The rise: parks, bridges and power
Moses began his career aiming to improve infrastructure and give New Yorkers more access to parks, beaches and recreation: Jones Beach, in the 1920s, was his first celebrated work. His vision of an efficient, modern city let him accumulate political and administrative power until he became the most influential figure in American urban development, builder of the Triborough Bridge and of the Long Island parkways. Caro shows how, thanks to his skill at manipulating political and financial structures — above all the public authorities he controlled through tolls — Moses operated outside the usual democratic checks for four decades.
Highways against neighbourhoods
The Power Broker is not a celebration. Caro digs into the dark side of that legacy: the urban renewal projects had a devastating impact on low-income communities. Moses prioritised highways and large infrastructure over the housing and public transport the most vulnerable needed, and his expressways — the Cross Bronx Expressway is the most cited case — cut through whole neighbourhoods, displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed communities in the Bronx and other working-class areas. They modernised parts of the city and, at the same time, fed inequality and segregation.
The social legacy and Robert Caro's critique
One of Caro's most incisive criticisms is Moses's lack of social sensitivity. Praised by the political and economic elite, his technocratic, authoritarian approach led him to ignore the residents affected by his decisions. The book documents how he used his power to favour the interests of the wealthy while the poor and minorities paid for his plans: he obstructed public housing, blocked the extension of the subway and worsened the housing and transport crisis of the most disadvantaged. His confrontation with Jane Jacobs over the expressway that would have cut through Lower Manhattan is the symbol of that period.
The fall of a model
The book also tells how Moses's style, built on absolute control of urban decisions, eventually brought about his fall. As criticism of his exclusionary policies grew, he lost the support of the public and of the politicians who had backed him, and his public image shifted from visionary to villain, symbol of the failure of a planning model that put infrastructure above people. That ending marked a turning point in the planning of New York and of other cities around the world.
The Power Broker is a monumental work that not only narrates Moses's life but offers a deep critique of his impact. Through meticulous analysis, Caro shows how Moses transformed the city forever and how his unchecked power and his indifference to the most vulnerable contributed to social fragmentation and inequality. It is a lesson about the dangers of concentrating too much power in one person and a reminder that urban planning must be inclusive and accountable to those who live in the city.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Robert Moses and what did he do in New York?
The planner who between the 1920s and 1960s built parks, beaches, bridges, tunnels and hundreds of miles of highways in New York while holding unelected offices, and whose works, according to Robert Caro, modernised the city at the expense of the neighbourhoods and poor residents they cut through.
Why is Robert Moses's legacy controversial?
Because his model prioritised the car and big projects over people, demolished whole neighbourhoods, neglected public transport and exercised power without democratic control, which The Power Broker documents and which neighbourhood protests in the 1960s finally stopped.
