I enjoyed reading your post Samantha!

You brought up some very interesting points about redevelopment. I agree that most of us find it easy to blame Moses for not being considerate in his plans, but that at least he got things done. For better or for worse, the city has been majorly shaped to be what it is today through the implementation of Moses’ plans. It is hard to ignore how much of an impact he has physically left on the city and even in his ideas that still linger in planners’ minds.

I do not know if I fully agree with your reasons as to why the city has been unable to take on such massive projects successfully since Moses. The city definitely does not seem to be planning thoroughly, but I find it hard to do so with the incorporation of private interests in public matters. I do not think it is because people are afraid to be tyrannical that they have not successfully engaged in such works. I think that there are a lot of factors that attribute to it. One thing that can be considered is that the public voices it’s opinions louder today than it use to, or at least the media displays the rejection that these plans face much more. For example, today in the news they covered at story about how people are upset with the addition of new bike lanes in the city. People are coming out and publicly voicing their rejections and that makes it hard to ignore them. At the same time, it can be questioned why the redevelopment of Times Square received 47 lawsuits against it and it still was passed. Who decides which opinions get heard and which ones matter is the issue. In Chapter 3 of “Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind” we see that even when the case of the Atlantic Yards came all the way to the Supreme Court they refused to hear the case (Larson 39). They had very substantial issues with its constitutionality in the use of eminent domain, yet they could not even be heard. The public opposition was able to “scale back aspects of the project,” yet none of this was able to put a stop to it (39). This inevitably raises the question of why such issues can just be ignored and can continue to go on when so many people can be against it, or, even more importantly, when the constitutionality of an action is questioned.

Although such tremendous building projects are not as easily accomplished today, as you point out, I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. I do not agree that gentrifying neighborhoods is the way that areas should improve; despite this, if we cannot come up with a way to stop this then at least if smaller projects take place hopefully less people will become displaced.

At the end of the article that you posted a link for about the 7 train, Larry Penner makes a good point of asking, “At the end of the day, riders and taxpayers have to ask if $2.4 billion for a 1.5-mile extension to one additional station build 21 months behind schedule is worth the cost” (crainsnewyork). His question is a really hard one to find an answer to. Adding just one stop to the line will only benefit a certain amount of people and deciding whether taxpayer money should be used for this rather than another project is really subjective.  It is something that might not even be able to be proven until after a project has been completed and we evaluate if its use has possibly outweighed its loses, and even then it is not that simple.

Thank you for all your insights!
Eleni