In an era when almost any project can be held up for years by public hearings and reviews by community boards, community groups, civic groups, and planning commissions, not to mention the courts, it is hard not to feel a certain nostalgic tug for Moses's method of building by decree.
These are the voters who grew up before Britain joined the EU, before increased immigration and in an era when genuinely competing ideological projects existed in politics.
In so doing, he undid one of the many efforts of Park Chung-hee, the even more modernisation-minded dictator who ran South Korea between 1962 and 1979 – an era when such a construction project looked like progress.
The same feat, for the Conservative Party, was last recorded by Margaret Thatcher before she stepped down in 1990 toward the end of an era when the Conservatives had projected themselves as the party of government for much of the 20th century.
But residents of the Ocean Hill Houses said they recalled that, during an era when gang violence in the projects was growing, John Taylor was routinely seen walking off to work in the uniform of a fast food worker.
Mr. de Botton said the project recalled an era when patrons underwrote artists and writers.
Various experts have championed modular reactors as a way for utilities in the United States and other countries to harness nuclear power in an era when the cost of a conventional project has become dauntingly large.
But Hollywood is sloshing in its Hot Tub Time Machine with a cluster of projects that recall an era when hair was big, heroes had biceps and the stars who are returning to the limelight were a lot younger.
But he said some votes had been motivated by a concern for fiscal responsibility in an era when the nation did not have the projected surpluses it now had.
And it could be a template in an era when state and federal agencies are retreating from ambitious redevelopment projects.
In an era when the United States government looked suspiciously on the funding of cultural projects, the Ford Foundation spent millions to support student exchanges, organize scholarly conferences and send American writers, poets and artists abroad.
