Print ArticleLast Episode? Cars. This one? Blight. Negroes. Civil Rights Violence. Racist Swine. Clever Engineers.In the sad and sadly predictable saga of how Jacksonville built a great swinging city by the river only to dynamite it back into the stone age and salt the earth to prevent any business community from ever growing back in its center, we have discussed how important it is to understand the mindset of the people that led to the outright decimation of the city center.
Parking.
In doing this, he set a pattern. People looked at the example of a city owned 'parking lot', and simply marvelled. How clever, they thought.....and he built it over a waterfront slum you say........incredible!
Of course, today we look back and wonder who the hell in their right mind would waste riverfront property (for Pete's Sake) on Parking.(!) But at the time, Burns seemed the very cure.
The cost was all the cultural diversity and international presence in the heart of the city.
We also dynamited a few blocks of property and a gilded city hall.
We got modern buildings, a virtually crime free riverfront, and a funky Library building.
However it was under the later administration of Burns that the most ambitious elements of his Civic restructuring took place.
All of them led by the guiding principals of a man named Robert Moses.
(to be continued...)
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