The Power Broker

Why it’s on the list: Caro’s study of Robert Moses — how one unelected official reshaped New York for forty years — as the definitive case study in how durable power is actually accumulated and spent.

Where I saw it: Perennial recommendation in city-building and institutional-power conversations; the canonical pairing for any serious reading on who really builds cities.

Connections

• City Building — Moses is the archetype (and cautionary tale) of the master-planner mode of building cities.
• The New City — contrast: top-down infrastructure power vs. emergent / designed-anew urbanism.
• Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City — two opposing visions of who shapes the built environment and to what end.