Urban Injustice: Robert Moses and Climate Inequity in NYC

Robert Moses, often referred to as New York City’s “master planner,” has left an indelible mark on urban infrastructure. From parks and beaches to bridges and highways, his contribution to the modernist architecture movement is visible in all five boroughs. Inspired by urban planners such as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, Moses’s work was largely focused on recreational areas and the development of architecture to support automobiles. However, his legacy isn’t just one of civic transformation; it is intertwined with social and economic inequities. Robert Moses’s racism and classism is reflected in his designs, which often cut off access to resources for communities of color and the working class. For instance, his exclusionary design of Jones Beach State Park was intentionally made to be inaccessible by public transportation in a time where automobiles were primarily owned by a white, middle-to-upper class demographic. His car-centric design also prioritized suburban expansion and freeway construction, causing displacement and the destruction of nature habitats. Today, these same patterns shape modern climate inequities, complicating NYC’s environmental efforts. 

Many of the current environmental crises in NYC are primarily caused by a lack of eco-conscious infrastructure. The urban heat island effect—the phenomenon where cities experience higher temperatures than rural areas—is linked to increased heat-related illness, higher energy consumption, and decreased air and water quality. Areas dominated by asphalt and without a tree canopy retain significantly more heat—a hallmark of Robert Moses’s racially inequitable planning. While Moses promoted the construction of parks and green spaces, many of his large-scale plans favored wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods and marginalized low-income and minority neighborhoods. He only facilitated the construction of one playground in Harlem—a paltry number compared to the 657 elsewhere in the city. His contribution to the lack of green spaces in communities of color is partially why areas like the South Bronx, Brownsville, and East Harlem are seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than wealthier neighborhoods like the Upper West Side or Park Slope. Residents in marginalized areas have limited access to cooling centers; public housing developments often lack functioning air conditioning systems. This can have deadly effects. When surrounding temperatures reach your internal body temperature, which is about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the body attempts to cool itself down by redirecting blood to the skin. This results in less blood and oxygen reaching the gut, causing it to become permeable. Endotoxins leak out, triggering an immune response in the bloodstream that can cause blood clots. This can also lower blood pressure, forcing the heart to pump faster to compensate. These heart rate spikes can cause heart attacks in vulnerable populations such as seniors and those with underlying conditions. The third danger is kidney failure—a risk for outdoor workers—caused by dehydration and the breaking down of muscle tissues as well as rhabdomyolysis, resulting from overexertion in extreme temperatures. Due to climate change, heat waves are increasingly common in NYC; several occurred in 2024 with more over 90 degree days that year compared to the previous two years. This disproportionately killed seniors, children, and chronically ill residents in under-resourced communities.

This pattern of predominantly white, wealthy neighborhoods having green spaces means minority neighborhoods have impermeable surfaces, exacerbating flood risk and stormwater vulnerability. East NY and parts of Far Rockaway have regular basement flooding and sewer backups, even in moderate weather, due to outdated stormwater infrastructure. Robert Moses’s destruction of the city’s wetlands is also a contributing factor to this issue. Even in the 1900s, NY was dominated by wetlands and swampy environments acting as natural flood control and water filters. However, the development of Moses’s parkways and projects led to large-scale removal of such terrain, resulting in our modern stormwater control issues. Flushing Meadows, Queens was once the home of 2,400 acres of marshland that were completely wiped out by 1966. Now, similar low-lying areas are at severe risk of flooding, especially as climate change causes sea level rise and severe storms.  

Moses’s twisted legacy also lives on through the air pollution crisis in minority communities. The most notorious example is the Cross Bronx Expressway—a highway forced through the heart of the South Bronx in the 1950s that is primarily a trucking route. Today, this area has the worst air quality in the Northeast; vehicles emit nitrogen dioxide and black carbon, which are particularly damaging to respiratory health. Fine particulate matter under 2.5 micrometers also poses a health risk, since they are able to travel deeply into the respiratory tract. Hospitalization rates in the area for childhood asthma are five times higher than the national average. Air pollutants, especially resulting from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, exacerbate asthmatics’ airway sensitivity to allergens. Asthma is also a risk factor for COVID-19, causing the disease to disproportionately affect African Americans and Latinos. According to a 2024 study, air and noise pollution are major concerns of residents in the area. Some of them are unable to afford soundproof windows in the struggle to find adequate housing. 

As climate change worsens and current policies fail to address some of our nation’s biggest environmental problems, NY has slowly begun to implement solutions for Robert Moses’s infrastructure. The city’s 2023 PlaNYC initiative has refocused its goals to prioritize environmental equity, including a mandate to increase tree coverage by 30 percent by 2035 to ensure that all New Yorkers will have access to green spaces and can be protected from natural disasters. Additionally, the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act mandates ambitious climate and environmental justice goals, requiring that at least 35 percent of clean energy investments benefit disadvantaged communities. The NYC Housing Authority has also launched a sustainability agenda, partially focused on making developments more resilient towards climate change and flooding. It won’t bring back the wetlands, but it’s a major step towards preparedness. There are also growing plans to cap portions of the Cross Bronx Expressway. In 2023, the Department of Transportation awarded a two million dollar grant to help create green spaces and mitigate air pollution. NYC’s efforts signal a growing effort to confront environmental injustices and prioritize the health of communities, offering hope for the future of the city’s infrastructure and planning. 

Despite these improvements, systemic issues remain. Robert Moses’s planning decisions from a century ago still define who gets to breathe clean air, stay cool in the summer, or face the impacts of climate change. Physical infrastructure and the design of a whole city is not something that can be easily undone. It reflects the values of the era and the control of those in power. However, the current efforts to build a climate resilient and more sustainable city signal hope for the future. NY is no longer built from the top down but rather from the ground up, and the road ahead is no longer paved by a single planner.