Marcio, Hifza

Alexander, Aimei

LIB 2205

Prof. Montgomery/Phillip

Annotated Bibliography

How can the Brooklyn Queens Expressway be transformed to redress the harm done to neighborhoods in its creation?

Most people are aware that Robert Moses built the BQE, and chose to cut a trench through the working. In many ways the Brooklyn Queens expressway can be transformed to redress the harm done to the neighborhood in its creation.

· The BQE corridor from red hook to long island city is poorly served from north south transit directly between Brooklyn and Queen. Need to take action to reduce traffic volume and improve reliability, to extend the highway life. Reduce crashes and begin transitioning users to other routes of transportation must be undertaken right away.

· Road conditions

The BQE serves as an important link for passenger vehicles through Brooklyn and Queens compared to other major roadway in the New York city area, handling both local and regional traffic; daily traffic exceeds 150,000 vehicles, including more than 15,000 trucks. It could be very dangerous by carrying this much traffic at the same time it causes many serious accidents due to bad condition of roads. We should work on road condition by reducing traffic and providing various directions to move on.

· Provide more green space, it can make the environment more healthy.

“Field Trip: Sunset Park.” Urban Omnibus, 10 May 2018, urbanomnibus.net/2013/11/field-trip-sunset-park/.

Neighborhood composition changed every year due to new “Scandinavian” such Hispanics, Asians, black, white, Sweden. Statistics being influenced yearly by which race is running or holding the sunset park area. But all the memories and residential areas lie east of 3rdavenue, the heart of the community taken down by Robert Moses in 1941. Various movie theaters, restaurants, mom and pops stores demolished for a 6-lane concrete overhead and streets from 39thto 63rdstreet were destroyed. Sunset park went through a drastic change that regardless of the various populations that have predominated various times in sunset park history, it “seems to have endured unique neighborhood character and hope it will remain as a neighborhood that continues to change and adapt.

Spellen, Suzanne. “Past and Present: A Red Hook Streetscape.” Retrieved from brownstoner.com/history/past-and-present-a-red-hook-streetscape/. 26 July 2013. Accessed, 23 October 2020.

The author, researcher, uses historical images and maps, dusting off Red Hook’s past to emphasize, more was lost than gained after the destruction of Red Hook. Warehouses that stored countless goods such as grains, coffee, raw cotton, and leather to factories that produced them such as vaseline, mattresses and wires all became history, as it was replaced by the construction of the BQE trench, and Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Brooklyn’s waterfront that contained more shipping and warehouse space than any part of the metropolitan area, vanished! The outstanding benefits of this waterfront (Cargo ships uploaded goods from all over the world, barges from the Erie-Canal were off loading natural resources from the Midwest, upper NY State and Canada) gave Red Hook its presence.

Kimmelman, Michael. “It’s a Crumbling Road to Despair. Can New York Fix the B.Q.E.?”April 10, 2019

The author discusses some ways to solve the problems of BQE. A Brooklyn planner named Marc Wouters, envisions erecting a second elevated highway, a temporary parallel bypass, next to the cantilevered stretch of the B.Q.E. City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer has floated a plan of his own to close the B.Q.E. except to trucks, making one level of the elevated roadway a linear park. The architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group/ BIG, offers a plan that moves the elevated B.Q.E. down to little-used Furman Street, which runs below the highway where it skirts Brooklyn Bridge Park. Furman would be widened by cutting into the berm now shielding the park from the highway. The benefits in terms of noise, air quality and open space are abundant. BIG says the disused cantilevers could be turned into more parkland or parking lots, revenue-generating shops or apartments, whatever Brooklynites wanted.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/arts/design/bqe-construction-nyc.html

Works Cited

https://www.buildingcongress.com/uploads/BQE_Expert_Panel_Report_v12_digital_distro_reduce.pdf

“Field Trip: Sunset Park.” Urban Omnibus, 10 May 2018, urbanomnibus.net/2013/11/field-trip-sunset-park/.

Morris), Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose. “How Robert Moses Shaped the Brooklyn of Today.” Brownstoner, 2 Dec. 2016, www.brownstoner.com/history/robert-moses-brooklyn-power-broker-bqe-expressway/.

Kimmelman, Michael. “It’s a Crumbling Road to Despair. Can New York Fix the B.Q.E.?”April 10, 2019. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/arts/design/bqe-construction-nyc.html