Brian Lerer on WNYC.

Now we'll do a follow-up on the segment we did on Wednesday in our series, 100 Years of 100 Things.

It was 100 years of Robert Moses, urban planner, extraordinaire,

meaning he accomplished a lot, but often for better and or worse, for so much of the

transportation infrastructure, especially, there was also a parks legacy that I think he's

much more beloved for and a housing legacy, but the

transportation infrastructure in and around New York City, also upstate, since much of his

power was in state-level authorities, got him so much hate and resentment and hurt so many people

and communities as time went on. So the follow-up

today is specifically on undoing some of the most destructive parts of Robert Moses' legacy.

There is literally a movement in New York and elsewhere these days to tear down highways,

tear down highways, where they are seen as doing more harm

than good. Now, to set this up, here's a caller we got on Wednesday, Thomas from Red Hook,

complaining about a particular Robert Moses roadway in his borough of Brooklyn.

So, yes, I live in Red Hook, and it's very apparent the Guaduas Expressway splits through Red Hook.

It's almost impossible to get across Hamilton Avenue except for a couple of overpasses.

But from what I know of this book, and I struggle with whether Robert Moses was a genius or an evil genius,

because certainly a lot of what he did was

destructive and also, you know, quite beautiful, especially Jones Beach.

But it seems from his work that he was fairly racist, especially in cutting off poor neighborhoods

like Red Hook, which was once the drug capital of the world,

as opposed to Cobbill or Carroll Gardens, which are much more wealthy because of that expressway.

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