ABSTRACT
One of the most discussed public campaigns in urban affairs is the battle between New York urbanist Jane Jacobs and New York infrastructure tsar Robert Moses. In her book Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) Jacobs holds up the road transportation projects of Robert Moses as the enemy of a loveable city, and her argument makes much sense. Yet at the same time, the book is blind to the extraordinary vehicle created by Moses and his colleagues, namely the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) (Doig, 2001). No explanation of the longstanding success of the New York city-state economy is possible without understanding the role of this authority in building the vital internal connections and flows which underpin the city. Unfortunately, we know little about these processes of city building. This is what this chapter is mainly about.
