The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, completed in 1964, paved the way for a generation of destructive urban highways in US cities.
Source: NYC Department of Parks
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On a hot summer day last August, a crowd gathered in a small plaza opposite a playground in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. There, in an enclave known as “Los Sures” (or “Southside”), two parks are cleaved by the Roebling Street onramp, where a stream of cars and trucks enter a tangle of freeway connecting the bridge to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Maria Pulido-Velosa, a member of the community development organization El Puente, took the microphone and addressed the group. “Our young people here that are trying to play in the playground and hang out on this plaza are constantly overburdened by noise and air pollution,” she said. “We know that this is not the way that it has to be.”