Moses turned any passing observation into a detailed improvement scheme

Evidence

Moses was to talk again to Miss Perkins. Every time he did, her astonishment grew. “He was always burning up with ideas, just burning up with them!” she was to say. “Everything he saw walking around the city made him think of some way that it could be better.” Happening once to comment that it was too bad that mothers who took infants to Central Park had to leave when diapers needed changing and go all the way home, she saw her idle words strike instant fire in Moses’ mind. Why not build diaper-changing shelters? he asked. They could be small structures, used for no other purpose; you wouldn’t even need attendants—the cost would be small. Or perhaps they could be additions to comfort stations already built—the cost would be smaller yet. It should certainly be looked into. Moreover, not all the ideas that he told her about required concrete and steel. Bob Moses, she realized, had thought through detailed new concepts of city budget making and social welfare legislation, prison administration and school administration, filing systems and methods of conducting public hearings. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 282

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Moses envisioned the West Side improvement decades before building it — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 281