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🪵 The Threshold

Landowners' resistance made large regional parks seem financially and legally impossible

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tagsja-picks, contrarian_or_surprising, singleton, xref, causal_relationships, trade, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@rome_bulldozer_2001, loc. 1077

3 min read

Landowners’ resistance made large regional parks seem financially and legally impossible

Evidence

The scope of the problem discouraged reformers as much as the political difficulties involved. … Parks large enough to serve any appreciable portion of New York City’s millions would have to be measured in the hundreds of acres, and since Long Island was run almost entirely by hostile local governments and landowners, how could those acres possibly be obtained? By purchase? Long Island property was valuable, immensely valuable in the hills and along the beach front where parks should be located. By condemnation? Condemnation of valuable property on the scale required would be fantastically expensive—in fact, unheard of in America. And since the barons’ battalions of lawyers could be expected to fight condemnation with every tactic available, the proceedings would take years. … And if, somehow, the parks were created, how would people get to them? Long highways would be required, and their rights-of-way would necessarily cross hundreds, if not thousands, of different properties, and that meant hundreds, if not thousands, of landowners who would be ready to fight, and that would mean hundreds and thousands of additional condemnation proceedings. The reformers realized that even in the unlikely event that they won on Long Island, that they actually succeeded in unhorsing the powerful barons, they wouldn’t know what to do with their victory. The problem was so big, the reformers thought it was insoluble; by 1922, their “park” discussions concerned mainly the creation of more small playgrounds in the city and the improvement of playground equipment. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 691

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: North Shore barons hoarded land mainly to keep the public physically away — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 659; Wealthy South Shore landowners spent heavily on dredging rather than risk subdivision — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 680; Park opposition came from wealthy estate owners protecting their private grounds — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 852 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

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