Robert Moses, hacking his way through neighborhoods. From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):
When he replied to protests about the hardships caused by his road-building programs, he generally replied that succeeding generations would be grateful. It was the end that counted, not the means. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Once, in a speech, he said:Related readingYou can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.The metaphor, like most Moses metaphors, was vivid. But it was incomplete. It expressed his philosophy, but it was not philosophy but feelings that dictated Moses’ actions. He didn’t just feel that he had to swing a meat ax. He loved to swing it.
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comments: 2
Is this comparable to what Haussmann did to Paris?
Sort of. Moses destroyed slums (while providing little or nothing in the way of help to relocate those displaced). He also destroyed neighborhoods that were far from slums. He knew Haussman’s career and called Haussmann “the brawny Alsatian,” so I would think he saw Haussman as a fellow ax-swinger.
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