> Most famously, in New York City the writer and urban visionary Jane Jacobs took on Robert Moses, rallying community opposition to his grand plan for the 10-lane Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have destroyed parts of Little Italy and SoHo.
The biographer Robert Caro paints a maddening picture of how Robert Moses decimated communities in NYC with his highways with effects that live on today. Moses did so with a disregard and even callousness for freeway placement, even when it would have made more sense not to have it run through a vibrant community.
The Power Broker is the best book I read last year. It is enlightening, frustrating, and at times enraging. It is 1344 pages. I recommend the audioboook.