The real culprit, according to those in the know, for the failure of Amazon to build a new campus in NYC, is someone who has been dead for almost 40 years -- that's right, our friend, our buddy, our pal, Robert Moses.
Why?
Well, from the 1920s until the 1960s, the "master builder" rammed highways around the city and state, and built other projects in a totally irresponsible manner, wrecking neighborhoods and disposessing their residents. In the name of "progress", he warped this city to his car-centric, anti-poor priorities, underfunding public transit in the process, and basically ignoring the concerns of the communities he affected. Remember, this is the guy who wanted to destroy Soho and Greenwich Village by putting a highway through it -- that was stopped by Jane Jacobs, and NYC vowed never to let something so awful ever possibly happen again.
By the time he left power in 1968, NYC was suffering a Robert Moses PTSD and new laws were enacted, including the little-known but extremely powerful public utilities committee, to prevent another Moses from building things in this city it didn't want, didn't need, and that would change it forever -- for the worse.
The result, today, is that it's practically impossible to build anything big in NYC as mayors and governors have learned to rue. It took 45 years to build three subway stops on the East Side, after all! You might call this an "overcorrection".
So whether you were for or against the Amazon deal, this situation proves that NYC today is living in Robert Moses legacy -- in the city he shaped and in the reaction to that -- and his form of progress from yesterday makes progress today all the harder.
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