AFTER MOSES, WHAT?:

...Mini plans" to preserve neighborhoods are being formulated in New York...

...This view, however, ignores the is-sue of what gets done...

...Nevertheless, Moses could always argue that he got things done-and so he did...

...Emphasis on neighborhood preser-vation hardly seems like a radical no-tion, but its implementation would in fact mean drastic changes in the orien-tation of every American city...

...Work-ing through public authorities-semi-autonomous corporations established by legislative act but responsible thereafter only to their bondholders-Moses was able to obtain financing for projects that went far beyond the original legislative intention...

...Moses, but it's very difficult to do business without Mr...

...Thousands of groups can stymie ac-tion...

...To the majority of those present, there seemed little doubt that the post-World War II development boom has had disastrous effects on American cities...

...its end appeared to provide an opportunity to reverse gears and reconsider which direction to take...

...His methods al-lowed for virtually no participation by the public or even by legislators...

...Speaking of present-day New York, Professor George Sternlieb of Rutgers University told the conference, "We have a city dominated by a liter-ally suicidal capacity for nay-saying...

...There are indications today that some Revaluation of urban policies is taking place, spurred in part by the kind of thinking that dominated the Tarrytown conference (which in turn owes much to Jane Jacobs' 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities...

...Public authori-ties are facing greater public scrutiny...

...Inspired by Robert Caro's book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, the con-ference brought together seven panel-ists and about 100 students, planners and environmentalists for discussions on future planning in New York and other cities...

...This idea of recession as a two-edged sword was evident at a recent con-ference at the Tarrytown Conference Center in Westchester County, N.Y., on the subject "After Robert Moses, What...

...Moses, of course, was the apostle of building and development...

...Yet if one talks with neighborhood activists, environmentalists and even some city planners, a somewhat different per-spective emerges: despite its tragic consequences, the recession isn't all bad...

...To some, this neighborhood em-phasis-and its corollary of decentral-ization to give communities a major policy-making voice-presents dilemmas...

...Most of the Tarrytown panelists sug-gested that it was time cities began thinking small...

...No one person can guarantee ac-tion...

...You may not like Mr...

...It assumes that the kind of massive projects built by Moses are what keeps a city healthy...

...The energy crisis has strengthened ad-vocates of mass transit...

...The planner's dilemma, Robertson said, is that "if you give him power that transcends local interests, he begins to abuse it, but with decentralization of power, you begin to believe you won't be able to do anything...

...Do we castigate Moses," asked Ja-quelin Robertson, a former high-level planner in New York City and now vice president of a real estate develop-ment firm, "because he had power or because...

...his ideas are wrong...

...Can you plan for a city," he asked, when its development is guided by people "whose only mo-tivation is to make the greatest amount of money through real estate...

...She cited Toronto as an ex-ample of a city that has taken steps to preserve its neighborhoods by such actions as calling a halt to downtown high rise construction, setting up traf-fic mazes in residential areas to dis-courage through traffic and concentrat-ing on keeping its present residents happy rather than scaring them away...

...Moses...

...Despite these hopeful signs, there was hardly a feeling of optimism at the Tarrytown conference...

...You can take living organisms, little things like blocks and neighborhoods," said Mary Perot Nichols, a senior editor and columnist at the Village Voice, "you can take things that are working and build on them...

...The National League of Cities has urged a policy of "urban conservation" that would concentrate on housing rehabilitation rather than expensive new de-velopments that have proved to be so disruptive...

...Yet a major point brought out in Caro's book-and one which he em-phasized at the conference-is that the urban decline he documents so well oc-curred at the very time centralization was proceeding apace...

...For while it is a fact that the economic situation makes it impossible to build worthwhile projects, it is equally true that the bad ones are be-ing stymied...

...Caro pointed to the proliferation of public authorities as a growing danger, calling them "a fourth branch of gov-ernment . . . that has its own sources of revenues...

...There are, certainly, some large-scale plans that must be carried out...

...The results by now are well known...

...For the problems of American cities are deep-seated, and unless the reforms are speeded up and greatly expanded, they are likely to prove too little and too late.le and too late...

...Although he never held elective office, Moses wielded unprecedented power for al-most half a century...

...The ex-tent to which his ideas and policies shaped New York-and served as a model for the rest of the country- is made clear by the need of his critics to use him as a starting point-if only to show how not to proceed...

...Cutbacks in services, municipal employee layoffs, a lack of funds for public construction, widening budget deficits, declining tax revenues - all these are said to be making the "urban crisis" worse...

...Some cities have established "Little City Halls" to help citizens cut through red tape to obtain better services...

...You're not going to be able to bring America around ecologically without a great deal of power...

...If private interests are to control the develop-ment of land and the exploitation of land," said Blake, "our cities have had it...

...For half a century in New York," Caro said, ".the motto has been, The cure for the evils of democracy is less democracy.' We might see if there is another way...

...Panelist Peter Blake, editor of Architecture Plus, questioned whether the city can survive if the free enterprise system re-mains unaltered...

...He suggested that if a new public authority is considered necessary to build a project, it should be limited to that project: "As soon as the improvement is paid off, the authority should turn it back to the city...