The following Letter to the Editor was published in the October 11, 2024 edition of The New York Times in Section A on page 19. You can read the original version here.
To the Editor:
Re “‘The Power Broker’ Is Magisterial. It Is Also Flawed,” by Ross Barkan (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Sept. 30):
Mr. Barkan’s take on “The Power Broker,” by Robert Caro, is measured, and runs counter to the popular one-sided, negative narrative that has emerged about Robert Moses in recent decades.
With Mr. Moses, you have to account for both the good and the bad. On Long Island in particular, his approach toward open-space preservation at a time when sprawl was starting its steady march east has been seen by some planners as visionary.
Mr. Moses was both a preservationist and a builder. For every Van Wyck or Cross Bronx Expressway, there was a Belmont Lake State Park or Jones Beach.
In the end, Mr. Caro’s work rightly set a high bar for telling the complex story of how Mr. Moses shaped our region. But popular perception has simplified nuanced lessons of “The Power Broker” into sweeping generalizations that fail to capture the entire scope of Mr. Moses’ deeds.
Richard Murdocco
Commack, N.Y.
The author is an adjunct professor of urban planning/environmental policy at Stony Brook University.
