We Found Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses’ Love Child
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This is Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a hard-working public space in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Opened in 1934, it cuts a seven-block-long, roughly seven-acre swath through neighborhoods that have long been, and still are, home to a heterogeneous mix of communities. …
Spend enough time witnessing the relentless energy of Sara D. and you begin to wonder, how did this unassuming patch of public land built by Robert Moses in the thick of the Depression become such a hotspot? …
… modern planning and spontaneous street life — frequently personified in the figures, or rather caricatures, of Moses and Jane Jacobs — are not mutually exclusive. This park owes its bones to big planning, and its vitality to everyday people.
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One of the front pages of The Power Broker shows a map of parks and roads projects initiated and/or completed by Moses. It simply looks like a map of Manhattan; so pervasive was his influence. Sara D. Park is just one example of hundreds. He was not always so very focused on highways.
Good thing he was not successful with his Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have bisected this park in half at Delancey Street and replaced other block-long sections with entry and exit ramps.
http://untappedcities.com/2013/09/11/nyc-that-never-was-robert-moses-lower-manhattan-expressway-lomex/