I have the same worry (demonization) since I am currently reading Power Broker. I’m only about 100 pages in so it’s still early in Moses’ career (thick book) and it seems that he was still “good” then. We’ll see how it goes.

Recently in my neighborhood of Ballard in Seattle the “historic preservationists” tried to stop a building from getting torn down. It was an ugly, recently closed Denny’s restaurant that was inhabiting some kind of older building that seemed kind of “polynesian”. Instead, they simply delayed it a year or so and we got to look at a fenced lot with a boarded up building on it. When the developers finally were able to proceed, they tore down the building but now the economy has stopped them as well. Now a fenced and empty lot. Mostly I think it was simply an ideological attack against “another condo building”.

I really don’t understand the hypocritical hipster greeners here in Seattle. They moan about urban sprawl and say we need to live more densely and get rid of our cars, etc. But, then when the rules are enacted to do this and developers start obeying by building condo buildings everywhere (that achieve the higher density) they start to piss and moan about that.