A single unelected official reshaped all American cities more than anyone else

Evidence

Parks, highways, urban renewal—Robert Moses was in and of himself a formative force in all three fields in the United States. He was a seminal thinker, perhaps the single most influential seminal thinker, in developing policies in these fields, and the innovator, perhaps the single most influential innovator, in developing the methods by which these policies were implemented. And since parks, highways and urban renewal, taken together, do so much to shape cities’ total environment, how then gauge the impact of this one man on the cities of America? The man who was for thirty years his bitterest critic, Lewis Mumford, says: … “In the twentieth century, the influence of Robert Moses on the cities of America was greater than that of any other person.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 64

Categorization

• QUESTION: A contested grand claim worth testing against other plausible figures - Caro selects Moses’s own bitterest critic as the witness, a notable rhetorical move.