A lot of different trends combined to create the decline of the Bronx between 1950 and 2000, and one of them is firmly within the realm of the built environment: the construction of highways. Any road entering New York City from the north has to pass through the Bronx, and starting in the 50s five of them were built, connecting to bridges to Manhattan and Queens. Arguably the most destructive was not one of those roughly-north-south roads but the only east-west road, the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Because of the hilly topography of the central Bronx, the road is mostly in a deep cut. Both the process of blasting that cut into the bedrock and the permanent division it caused damaged the neighborhoods it passed through.
A recent study by a number of city and state agencies looked at what it would mean to try to cover the cut, to build platforms over the depressed portions of the Cross-Bronx: here. There’s a good summary, in non-technical language, at Gothamist: here. In short, there are social and environmental benefits that are hard to argue with, but the difficulty of building a long-span roof capable of taking the massive loads from park land or buildings drives the cost high.
New York in its current form is the result of more than 200 years of large-scale infrastructure projects, starting with the Commissioners’ Plan for the street grid and the Croton water system, and small-scale infrastructure projects going back to the beginning 399* years ago. In this case, the problem to be overcome is one of our own making rather than one of geography, but that doesn’t mean that solving it is any less important.
* Starting after New Years, you can expect me to be discussing that round number.
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