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Re: Brooklyn Dodgers (on topic) |
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Posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Mon Jul 23 14:33:13 2007, in response to Re: Brooklyn Dodgers (on topic), posted by Russ on Mon Jul 23 13:51:38 2007. New York City would have died without the vision of Bob Moses. It would have ended up like Detroit and so many other formerly great American cities.That's an opinion loaded with irony. Detroit embraced the automobile far more than New York did, and this accelerated the suburbanization of that city. Detroit is a much different city than NYC. NYC, as a city and it's surrounding areas built on islands, that need good roads, tunnels and bridges to access them, it's more important than cities that are not a part of a whole river, and island configuration. NYC and Long Island would have choked if not for it's bridges and tunnels and good roads to access them. The man may have been arrogant and stubborn but that is the only way to get things done in NY. Nothing of public importance has been built here since he left the scene. The reason why its so difficult to build great public projects is because of laws that were passed in reaction to Robert Moses, not because of the lack of a great man. Oh please. This is not a NY phenomena, this is true everywhere nowadays that it's hard to get things built. Imagine NYC had Moses never existed. It would have become a dump. The pre-WWII Robert Moses left a legacy that supports your opinion. The post-WWII Robert Moses does not as he did turn parts of New York into "a dump." It wasn't "RObert Moses". There was a turnover from city life to suburbanization ALL OVER the country in that era. There was a "white flight" from the city to suburbs ALL OVER the country. This is not at all unique to New York City. And areas like Bushwick fell all on their own with out the help of the "Cross Brooklyn" expressway that "supposedly" killed the Bronx. The Bronx was in trouble long before the Cross Bronx Expressway, and areas fell all on their own without the "Cross Brooklyn", so one does not necessarily cause the other. The Bronx indeed would have fallen even without the Cross Bronx Expressway. Robert Moses didn't "kill" the city, people were "killing" cities all over the country as cars became the norm, and people left the city for the suburbs. If anything, seeds for the flight from the cities in the 1950's began when cars were invented. Robert Moses didn't cause that, he just happen to be a man in that era that just expanded upon the national trend, and the need for expanded roads, bridges, and infasturucture that was necessary with the country's new found love of automobiles. One of his worst legacies are the Le Corbusier inspired housing projects that he built. Functioning neighborhoods were replaced with architectural monstrosities that helped to institutionalize poverty. While I agree that "mega-projects" were not the answer either, many of these neighborhoods were far from "functioning" neighborhoods. Many of these old buildings destroyed were barely livable in the 50's, they were 1800's old law tenemants that had never recieved any sort of upgrading for modern living. Today, in hindsight, sure they could have been rehabilitated, but again, you are thiniing in TODAY's thinking where what's old is new again. Back in the 40's, 50's and 60's, it was an "out with the old, in with the new" mentality. People LEARNED from their mistakes, but back then, it was a different thining, that was NOT unique to Moses. (These are the same generations that destroyed Penn Station for a "modern" arena and office tower), and thought that was a good idea. But no, it didn't institutionalize "poverty". Poverty was already in many of these un-upgraded 1800's old law tenament buildings, many of which didn't even have central heating yet. Robert Moses' legacy, though, has definitely not stood the passage of time. Says who? One book that only writes one side of the story from one angle? What about all the millions of people that use the parkway system, the expressways, the tunnels, the bridges AND the Parks....and see what NY would be like without any of these improvements to the infastructure. Just see what it's like when one of these bridges are closed for repair, or a highway is blocked because of a major accident on them, and see what a mess things are without them. It's the same thing as when a subway line is out or unusable for some reason. |
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