ニューヨーク都市内高速道路ロアーマンハッタンエクスプレスウェイ計画でのリンゼイ市政による複合開発の試み

<p> In the 1960s, the conflict between Robert Moses, chairman of the New York state/city-affiliated highway authority and Jane Jacobs, urban sociologist helping the residents oppose the highway, over how to remodel the city of New York symbolized the sharpening of the dispute between state and local administrations versus local community, and its turning point in highway planning philosophy. The most conflicting case was the interstate highway named the Lower Manhattan Expressway (Lomex) crossing the southern tip of densely built-up Manhattan Island, the district of SoHo. Both Moses and Jacobs had to leave the scene in 1968, because Moses resigned his post and Jacobs left for Canada after her arrest at the public hearing of Lomex. The John Lindsay Administration of New York City eventually had to accept the duty to tackle this issue. Despite several books written by eminent writers such as Robert Caro (1974), Anthony Flint (2009), Scott Larson (2013) and Jean Dory (2018), they focused on the relationship between Moses and Jacobs from the perspective of their conflicts. Therefore, it was unclear what kind of administrative actions had been taken by the Lindsay administration during the period since 1968 until Governor Rockefeller’s termination notice of Lomex project in 1971. The author tried to clarify the process between through discovering relevant public information and documents concerned with this issue.</p><p> When planning highways in urban areas, it is required for local planning bodies to reach an agreement on its necessity with the community along the route in a prospect of community benefits. If being based on the agreement, the concept of “Joint Development” to utilize the air-right above the highway for new public facilities will be meaningful. It was originally studied and conceptualized by the Federal government in 1968 as a possible clue for the highway planning. As the Federal-Aid Highway Act introduced the concept of joint development, it was designed to integrate such a single-purpose agency of highway planning as the state highway bureau with other multiple local planning bodies, in a wider prospect. The Lindsay administration attempted to search an agreeable solution to the highway problem by using this method. They started preparation in early 1969 to launch a new study scheme of joint development by the special task force of social-economic and environmental expertise.</p><p> Just prior to this planned study, the City Environmental Bureau disclosed the result of air pollution simulation of planned Lomex that indicated a highly polluted air for public facilities above the open-cut structure. When decreasing air pollution caused by heavy traffic, it could not be expected a satisfactory progress in foreseeable future because of the then technological limitation of automobile industry. The joint development became hardly to proceed. In 1969 the Lindsay administration declared the termination of Lomex with a reason as the residents opposition.</p><p> After Lomex, the Lindsay administration still tried to apply joint development to other highway reform projects, but could not succeed. Since the failure of the Lindsay Administration, all successive city administrations have avoided planning new urban highways in New York.</p>