One can only imagine what cities would be like if they were ringed by accessible tracts of nature, like [A Pattern Language's](https://papertrail.biblish.com/russell/14fafeda-69d6-4ef0-8e1d-374fbdb607ab) country fingers.

# 9. A Dream Parks, especially in the era of organized gangs, have become no sure redoubt from urban problems, even if they are nominally there for the use and increased enjoyment of your law-abiding citizen and are an obvious necessity. I wonder if a more nuanced theory of parks has developed.

Maybe it is the time, or the level of government, but I doubt if bill writing at the federal level is a matter of individual expertise.

Legislative steering fascinates me. Here we see Moses assisting Jimmy Walker steer Governor Smith's legislative priorities through a chamber they ostensibly control by one vote. Caro's book on Johnson delves into Johnson's expertise in this matter extensively.

# 8. The Taste of Power

How bleak is this transformation? It is bleaker still because this seeming need to corrupt one’s moral stance to obtain power has not changed.

Moses’s phd thesis on grading civil servants for promotion.

# Chapter 5 Age of Optimism

Mitchel is the mayor that Moses hopes will implement the ideas from his phd thesis.

Marriage to Mary

Describes the grading system, wherein, at Level 5, raises were unlimited and up to the department head, a mechanism which was used by Tammany to reward loyalty. Base pay of $3,260 / yr with 10k of 50k city employees at this level. Many with $7,500 when private sector work of a similar description for you $2,100. I need a refresher on where Bob Moses is actually employed at this point. As per of. 74 he works for The Municipal Research Bureau (The Bureau) and is assigned ten assistants to study the implementation of his grading program.

In roughly 1917, mayor mitchel gives the railroad exclusive control of the west side waterfront for $300,000 so that they can elevate the tracks to reduce deaths.

# III The Rise to Power

# 6. Curriculum Changes

My fiancée’s mom’s mom was a Root and is somehow related to Elihu Root.

Belle Moskowitz proposal to restructure the state government.

The bureau of municipal research recommends a move from 169 state departments, boards, and other apparatuses to 12 departments headed by appointees of the governor. As a bureau staffer, Moses comes in contact with Bell Moskowitz.

*The Report of the Reconstruction Commission to Governor Alfred E. Smith on Retrenchment and Reorganization in the State Government*

# 7. Change in Major

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and Al Smith legislating for reform proposals

Facts are easy to put forward in a logical manner, and they tell the lion’s share of the story. Personal charisma, or some strange interaction between personalities, that holds two figures fast or sends them violently apart, are matters more often lost to history, yet they can, as in the case of Smith and Moses, be definitive in their influence.

# 2. Robert Moses at Yale What was tuition?

Lyndon Johnson’s precocious political talent also took explicit form in collegiate organizations that, while ostensibly powerless, could be made to have power.

I expect Robert Moses, with his ideas for great highways, as well as little shelters, will be an implementer of pattern languages with an incredibly high polarity, good and bad, often in one and the same implementation.

I also want to say at this point that there is a rap on Caro that he may bend credulity in certain incidents. For the sake of narrative, or politics, or what, I do not know. I am I’ll-equipped to discover the merit of these accusations, and I forget where I have seen them, but it bears mentioning.

I am not wholly equipped to assess expressways on their merits. I know they are awful for traffic patterns and the circulation of cities. They were also built for a small fraction of the traffic that now utilizes them, and so require constant repair. Was the investment in expressways the right choice at the right time? I do not know.

The numbers often get slip comprehension when reading about spending on bills and programs in Caro’s books. I will likely make a note of them to try to keep the figures accessible and useful. > *By 1957, $133,000,000 of public monies had been expended on urban renewal in all cities of the United States with the exception of New York; $267,000,000 had been spent in New York*

At its height in 1960, Triborough controlled 103,071 acres with revenue of $213,000,000.

Insurance has long been a tool of political control in Chicago wards. Laws mandate insurance policies, and ward bosses or those connected with them offer these policies, using some of the funds to buy to community. In this case, it seems a similar principle has moved up the rungs of society, and Moses took out policies from firms controlled by people with political leverage as a way to bribe them.

# Part I The Idealist