Archinect - News

How New Orleans dodged Robert Moses's "Riverfront Expressway"

2019-08-13T19:45:00-04:00

Fifty years ago this summer, word reached New Orleans that John Volpe, secretary of the Department of Transportation under President Richard Nixon, had canceled the Riverfront Expressway—the high-speed, elevated interstate highway slated for the edge of the French Quarter.

Tulane University urban geographer Richard Campanella pens a lengthy remembrance for the failed Riverfront Expressway, a Robert Moses-designed highway that would have cut New Orleans off from its historic waterfront and the Mississippi River.

The epic struggle to turn back the highway was dubbed “the Second Battle of New Orleans,” and brought together preservationists, community members, and business interests against the infamous Power Broker.

Unbuilt highway schemes — and the traces they left behind

2018-01-08T15:00:00-05:00

The postwar passion for highway construction saw cities around the world carved up in the name of progress. But as communities fought back many schemes were abandoned – their half-built traces showing what might have been

Jane Jacobs makes an appearance in Amazon's newest hit, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"

2018-01-05T12:36:00-05:00

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a charming, new series put out by Amazon. Written by Amy Sherman-Palladino of the early aughts hit Gilmore Girls, the show tells the story of a 1950s, Jewish upper-middle-class housewife, Miriam Maisel (played by Rachel Brosnahan), as she finds her way into stand-up comedy stardom after being unexpectedly left by her husband for his secretary. What ensues over the course of eight episodes, is the delightful, 2017-inspired transformation of her character, from a housewife to a career woman. Mrs. Maisel's routine is accidental, her first "act" occurring as a drunken rant that happens to be on stage after her husband's departure. But, it is her uninhibited, risqué takes and musings on being a mother and a woman that make both her standup and the show itself a pleasure to watch.

Mrs. Maisel's dive into the New York comedy scene leads her to new discoveries about the world off the stage as well. Set circa 1958, a time of many changes, one of the shows joys is...

Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses star in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” documentary, coming to U.S. theaters in April

2017-03-20T16:15:00-04:00

The historic feud between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses is hitting the silver screen in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, a fairly new feature-length documentary directed by Matt Tyrnauer and produced by Robert Hammond (co-founder and executive director of NYC's Friends of the High Line). Following premieres at DOC NYC and the Toronto International Film Festival last year, “Citizen Jane” will be released in theaters and on demand in the U.S. on April 21.

Set in the 1950s and '60s in New York City, the film centers around Jane Jacobs' fight against Robert Moses' ruthless urban “renewal” schemes that targeted NYC's “slums” and its vital communities — a situation that many cities worldwide still face today. It also sheds light on European modernist ideals of architecture and urban design finding its place in the U.S., according to one film review.

“We realized that no one had done a film about Jane Jacobs,” Producer Robert Hammond said in a statement. “She came up with her own common s...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Foxx on the troubled relationship between infrastructure and race: "We ought to do it better than we did it the last time"

2016-04-28T13:53:00-04:00

As a child, Anthony Foxx knew he couldn’t ride his bike far from home without being blocked by a freeway. By the time he became U.S. transportation secretary he understood why. “We now know — overwhelmingly — that our urban freeways were almost always routed through low-income and minority neighborhoods, creating disconnections from opportunity that exist to this day,” [...] “I really believe that this is an issue that has been on the shelf collecting dust for a long time,” Foxx said.

Transforming a garbage heap into a public park

2015-07-02T17:37:00-04:00

Since the capping and closure of Fresh Kills’ five mounds, this 2,200-acre expanse of wetlands, marshlands, dry lowlands, forests, and grasslands has evolved into an unusual combination of natural and engineered beauty.

Originally a patch of creeks and marshland on the western shore of Staten Island, the area now known as Fresh Kills became a major landfill for New York City in 1948, once Robert Moses bought the land for housing development. His plan was to solidify the marshland with waste for a few years, and then build. But construction never happened, and for the remainder of the 20th century, the area served as a 2,200-acre garbage heap (by comparison, Central Park covers 843 acres). People hated it, and in 2001 managed to get the city to close it down, and begin the process of transforming it back into its (more or less) former ecological state, to be used as a public park known as Freshkills.

Learn more about Freshkills' storied past:

Is Le Corbusier the real grandfather of hip-hop?

2014-09-17T14:15:00-04:00

"In the late 1920s, Le Corbusier created a plan for Paris," Ford says. "Its most celebrated portion was called 'Towers in the Park.' [...] Think unremarkable, high-rise apartment buildings. Think low-income housing projects. [...] "Many of hip-hop's most prominent artists were born, raised, and perfected their crafts in those very same housing projects. Hip-hop was a result of the economical, political, and sociological deprivations instituted by the housing projects across America."

Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs: The Opera

2014-04-24T16:27:00-04:00

It's the urban planning equivalent of Rinaldo. Except instead of the siege of Jerusalem, it's the battle for Greenwich Village. The legendary 1960s struggle pitted planning czar Robert Moses against neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to make the city easily navigable by car [...] But the powerful planner met his match when he proposed an expressway through Lower Manhattan. Though she had little institutional support, Jacobs built a citizen coalition that ultimately defeated Moses.