Rethinking the Bronx’s ‘Soundview Slums’: The Intersecting Histories of Large-Scale Waterfront Redevelopment and Community-Scaled Planning in an Era of Urban Renewal

Authors

Kara M. Schlichting, CUNY Queens CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 5-2017

Abstract

In the 1910s, the bungalow colony Harding Park developed on marshy Clason Point. Through the 1930s–1950s, Robert Moses sought to modernize this East Bronx waterfront through the Parks Department and the Committee on Slum Clearance. While localism and special legislative treatment enabled Harding Park’s preservation as a co-op in 1981, the abandonment of master planning left neighboring Soundview Park unfinished. The entwined histories of recreation and residency on Clason Point reveal the beneficial and detrimental effects of both urban renewal and community development, while also demonstrating the complicated relationship between localism and largescale planning in postwar New York City.

Comments

This is the accepted manuscript of an article originally published in the Journal of Planning History.