If there's one story of urban politics that almost everyone has heard of, it's the confrontation in New York between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. Imagine the city in the 1950s. For three decades Robert Moses � the Master Builder � had reshaped New York, with new parks, bridges, tunnels, highways, and housing developments. Some of these are still seen as positives: the Lincoln Center, the United Nations headquarters, lots of big parks and pools, hundreds of playgrounds. And although the housing projects are monotonous, many did replace tenements that no one would want to live in today.
But today, Moses is far more often seen as villain than benefactor. He rammed highways through neighborhoods all over the city, displacing half a million people. Favoring highways over transit, he hardwired urban car-dependency. His parkways were designed to exclude public transit, to keep the lower classes out of his new regional parks. Almost none of his new playgrounds were built in minority neighborhoods � a subtle exercise in geographical racism. Above all, he was an arrogant bully: contemptuous of democracy, who famously declared that:
"You can draw any kind of pictures you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra and Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis you have to hack your way with a meat ax."
His example was influential beyond New York: city officials elsewhere admired him as a man who knew how to get things done. When I was studying the history of urban expertise in Toronto I found a quote from Fred Gardiner, first Chairman of the Metropolitan Toronto Government, who declared in 1959:
"We have found that you can line your shelves with reports, plans, and models but eventually you must choose those projects which common sense tells you are most important, give them the necessary priorities and, as Robert Moses would say, put in the steam shovels and the bulldozers".
There's even some nostalgia today for Moses. And whatever you might think about his style, he certainly got things done. In an era when city planning often seems an exercise in gridlock, that must count for something.
As Robert Caro explained in The Power Broker, his biography of Moses (a massive but wonderfully readable book � it kept me up late for many nights), there was nothing really mysterious about how he managed to wield so much power. He had three strategies for success:
� Hold multiple city offices at the same time (nearly a dozen, at one point). So when Moses had to get approval for a project, he often had to go to� Moses. (A not unrelated point: he usually worked 15 hours a day.)
� Build a secure and independent source of revenue, that could provide seed money for projects. Tolls from the Triborough Bridge served nicely for that.
� Always have fully-developed plans on the table, ready to go. Whenever the federal government or New York State announced money for urban projects, his detailed proposals would appear instantly in Washington or Albany.
A master of the bureaucratic system, for 30 years Moses worked almost unchallenged (save for occasional checks from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who couldn't stand him).
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| 555 Hudson -- the revolution starts here |
Until he encountered Jane Jacobs. Jacobs was living in lower Manhattan, at 555 Hudson Street. (By the way, she and her husband bought this townhouse in 1947, paying $7,000. In 2009 it was listed for sale at $3.5 million. That's real estate in New York.) Jacobs had been thinking about cities, and what makes them work, writing The Death and Life of Great American Cities, fighting the destruction of Pennsylvania Station (sadly, it went), as well as the dismantling of Greenwich Village to make way for high-rise housing (some of the Village was demolished, but most is still here).
After decades of building expressways across the city, by the early 1960s Moses thought it was time to complete the network, with new highways cutting straight across Manhattan. One of these was the Lower Manhattan Expressway. It had been on the books since the 1940s, but with new developments underway (including the World Trade Center) it became a higher priority, for both Moses and the city government.
The plan was for an elevated highway that would link the Holland Tunnel in the west to the Williamsburgh and Manhattan bridges in the east. It would have cut across what is now Soho (SOuth of HOuston), as well as several other neighborhoods, displacing about 2000 families, and 800 businesses with about 10,000 workers. The highway would have also blighted much of the surrounding urban space. But in a clash of argument and style often described as operatic (really: it will soon be an opera), Moses and Jacobs went to battle over the plan. Jacobs called the highway a "monstrous and useless folly". She and many others, including artists and other creative types attracted to the neighborhood, organized protests. And they won: in 1971 the highway was cancelled. The episode has since been described as a sign that cars would no longer rule unchallenged in American cities (and that Moses would no longer rule in New York). Here's a detailed overview of its history.
For years I've told this story whenever I teach urban environmental issues. But I've always wanted to see just what was at stake with the project. So we decided to walk the route of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. There are aerial views of the proposed highway, but my guide in reconstructing its route was this map; I have yet to find a clearer picture of what was intended.
So out we headed one sunny weekend, armed with camera and an iPad loaded with maps and documents, humming "Lookin' for love highways in all the wrong places." Our mission: to trace the route of the highway-that-never-was. We began at the west, where the Holland Tunnel emerges from the Hudson River. Here, at the corner of 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), the highway would have begun its above-ground route, arching over 6th Avenue:
It would then have extended through these blocks of the West Village (and in this and all following photos, it's important to keep in mind that the highway would have required demolition of every building visible):
And here, the highway would cross above Broadway, requiring demolition of these buildings:
East of Broadway, the highway would continue, through these buildings:
And on into Little Italy:
The south branch would take out the following blocks of Chinatown:
Meanwhile, the east branch would head through the Bowery, descending into a trench, and taking out the following blocks:
It would have then crossed (in a trench) Sara Roosevelt Park. Here is the only, very short section of the highway that was actually built, completed in 1964. There's no sign of it now, but I believe this section exists below this open space in Roosevelt Park:
After the park, the highway would cut through the Lower East Side (still in a trench), taking out the following blocks:
There's broad consensus that this highway would have done enormous damage to what are now bustling neighborhoods, where thousands of people live and work. (And considering the sheer number of buildings to be demolished, it's hard not to believe that the estimates of 2000 families and 800 businesses displaced by the highway was a huge underestimate.) Along the way, a century of architectural heritage, including some remarkable buildings, would have disappeared. So I think it's interesting to visit the terrain, to see just what was at stake in deciding whether the city was for cars, or for people.
(And thanks to Barb Znamirowski for help with photoshopping!)
(And thanks to Barb Znamirowski for help with photoshopping!)
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