Planning for humanity in the mass differs fundamentally from planning for specific communities

Evidence

There was a difference between building parks and parkways in the country—on sparsely populated Long Island, where most of Moses’ previous projects had been concentrated, or in rural upstate counties—and building them in a city, and the difference was people. When you built a park on a deserted sand bar such as Jones Beach, you didn’t have to worry about removing people from the site and relocating them somewhere else because there weren’t any people. You were building parks and parkways for people, of course, and therefore you had to take people’s needs into consideration in planning them, but only in a broad, impersonal sense, for you were planning for people in the tens of thousands, humanity in the mass, and the needs of humanity in the mass could be deduced as well from a general knowledge of people as from a specific knowledge of the human beings who made up the mass. When you built public works in a countryside you were painting on a clean and empty canvas—and you could use brush strokes as broad as you chose. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 2058

Categorization

• DEFINE: The clean-canvas versus existing-mural distinction becomes Caro’s organizing metaphor for the whole chapter.
• XREF: connects to: Humanity functions as an organizing idea, not a concrete entity — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 215; Citizenship and humanity, though linked, are not the same status — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 699; Humanity’s viewpoint and society’s viewpoint remain in principle distinct — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 215 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Humanity functions as an organizing idea, not a concrete entity #expands (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 215
• Humanity’s viewpoint and society’s viewpoint remain in principle distinct #corroborates (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 215
• Neoliberal critique deployed a two-pronged argument against planning #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1367
• Citizenship and humanity, though linked, are not the same status #expands (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 699