Bonnie and Alejandro Rodriguez walking past the River House in the South Bronx. Asta Kongsted
As one of the largest infrastructure plans in New York City history threatens to overlook the South Bronx, one father is making sure his daughter won’t be.
Asta Kongsted
Alejandro and Bonnie Rodriguez share a bond that is rare between a father and his teenage daughter. Rodriguez will open the door for Bonnie, fetch her water, and ask questions on her behalf. He will pull out her chair and present her with ethical dilemmas. Rodriguez is not just raising Bonnie. He is trying to clear a path for her.
An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Alejandro Rodriguez arrived in the U.S. in 1990. He wanted to be a teacher, but no one was willing to hire him. Instead, he worked various jobs: at a McDonald’s, in a supermarket, and as a mental health worker. These days, he said, his wife has a good job as an executive secretary at the Univision television network, and his time can be better spent making life as easy as possible for their five kids. He wants them to have opportunities. So on weekdays, Rodriguez is the family’s private taxi driver, taking the kids to school, picking them up, and running their errands. “We call him the butler,” Bonnie said. Rodriguez explained that he is just trying to help his family members go “as far as they can.”
On a recent Thursday night, Rodriguez and Bonnie sat down at the South Bronx River House for a career panel hosted by the Bronx River Alliance, a local climate advocacy group whose headquarters is located just off the Cross Bronx Expressway. Focused on helping high school students think through their career paths, the panel consisted of local professionals talking about their jobs in the environmental sector. Rodriguez was interested in careers in general, of course, but he also had a more specific goal in mind: he was hoping to secure a summer internship for Bonnie with the Bronx River Alliance.
In one brightly lit room of what was once dubbed “the greenest building in the South Bronx” by the New York Times, the environmentalists discussed their jobs; the restoration of marshlands in the Bronx; and Mayor Eric Adams’ promise to increase the city’s budget for parks, which he has yet to fulfill. Meanwhile, the panel moderator was running in and out of the meeting, trying to locate the pizzas she had ordered, which had gone missing.
Along with most of the teenagers in the room, Bonnie stayed silent throughout the whole thing. Rodriguez, however, had questions.
The panel was discussing community activism and wetland restoration, but how would such small-scale initiatives balance out something like—Rodriguez gestured toward the heavily trafficked street just outside—decades of city planning decisions in which Bronx residents practically had no say? These had left the area congested and polluted. The South Bronx was hotter, dirtier, and poorer than most places in New York City.
“I’m here for my daughter,” Rodriguez said, pointing toward Bonnie. “She’s going to be on this planet for a long time.”
As Rodriguez did not point out that afternoon, but as activists from the Bronx River Alliance knew well, the South Bronx community was right then in danger of being pushed aside by larger forces who had been making plans for their community without their input. The federal Army Corps of Engineers was in the “public comment” period of its planning of a massive flood protection project for New York City. To South Bronx environmental advocates, the Engineers’ plan for their borough was, at best, underwhelming.
The South Bronx is loosely defined as the area encompassing southern neighborhoods in the Bronx such as Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris. Its northernmost limit, however, is sharply outlined by the Cross Bronx Expressway. With its elevated structure and belts of roads criss-crossing one another, it looks like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie from the last century. To some extent, that is exactly what it is.
Built between 1948 and 1972, the Cross Bronx Expressway was the first major freeway in the U.S. to cut through an urban area. It was the notorious city planner Robert Moses who first thought to place webs of freeways in the middle of cities instead of outside of them. Moses was eager to connect whiter and more affluent parts of the city to the suburbs, enabling families in those areas to relocate to places like New Jersey and Staten Island. To do so, he created road systems that went right through apartment complexes in economically and socially disadvantaged areas like the South Bronx, displacing thousands of people in the process.
When Moses began his reign over New York City in the 1920s, the city did not have the little green oases that New Yorkers enjoy today. For the first time in American history, more people lived in cities than in rural areas. Space on the ground was suddenly hard to come by, and so, people had begun building into the air. It was the era of the skyscraper. What had three centuries earlier been one of the most ecologically diverse places in Northern America had by then been completely transformed by rapid urban development.
To mitigate some of this for city residents, Moses, over several decades, created 20,000 acres of parkland along with 658 playgrounds. Almost every recreational space that appeared in the city during that time did so because Moses wanted it to. Which is also to say that every park and every playground that didn’t appear to some extent didn’t because Moses decided that it shouldn’t.
Though shaped by the same planners who transformed Manhattan, the South Bronx stands out to this day for its incredibly wide streets, high concentration of expressways, and lack of parks. Studies have shown that green spaces are fewer and farther between in communities of color and socially vulnerable neighborhoods. Today, the average park size in affluent parts of the city is 14 acres compared to 6.4 acres in poorer areas. Neighborhoods of color generally have 28% less park space than primarily white ones.
While the systematic neglect of communities of color in New York City can in large part be traced back to Moses, it wasn’t solely his invention. Similar patterns can be observed all over the country. Various local and federal policies, including the practice known as “redlining,” combined to segregate cities by race and class. The poverty that redlining kept communities in has become generational. It has also become a health hazard.
With more asphalt to attract heat and fewer green spaces to absorb it, temperatures in the South Bronx can easily be 10°F higher than they are in downtown Manhattan on a warm day. That is a stark difference in the increasingly hot summers. On average, 10 New Yorkers die each year of heat-related causes. This disproportionately affects people of color and elderly residents. At the same time, the South Bronx is one of the only areas of the city which has not experienced an increase in air quality. On the contrary, one study found that the levels of black carbon air pollution are on the rise. This is in part due to an increased traffic around the city’s vital infrastructure points such as food and waste collecting sites, many of which are located in the South Bronx.
It was the writer Robert A. Caro who noted that for a supposedly apolitical figure, Moses was more influential than most elected officials, governors, and mayors of New York, many of whose names are long forgotten. “A key element of the image of Robert Moses that had for 40 years been created and burnished by him and by an adoring press was that he was the very antithesis of the politician, a public servant uncompromisingly above politics who never allowed political considerations to influence any aspects of his projects,” Caro wrote in 1998. But for someone who had never been publicly elected, the power Moses held would prove itself consequential in many ways.
More than 50 years have passed since Moses retired; since then, New York has changed many times over. Several of the city’s biggest infrastructure projects in recent times have, however, continued in a vein that seems consistent with his philosophy. The Gateway Program invested billions of dollars in a rail line connecting New Jersey with Manhattan (rather than Queens or the Bronx), while 80% of the traffic-related budget of the Biden administration’s 2021 Infrastructure Bill was directed towards highways and roads rather than public transportation.
At the same time, Hurricane Sandy in 2012—and the subsequent growing public awareness of climate change—ushered in what could be a new age of city planning. Billions of federal dollars are being earmarked for major projects to alter the cityscape in places like New York City to address climate change. The question is whether this era of city planning is going to be fundamentally different from the previous one when it comes to the protection of vulnerable communities: will it result in a new-found prioritization of places like the South Bronx, or will it leave them, essentially, to fend for themselves?
On a mild February afternoon, Alejandro Rodriguez and Bonnie sat down at San Marco’s Cafe not far from the Bruckner Expressway, another South Bronx freeway created by Moses. Rodriguez ordered a cup of coffee for himself and a plate of fries for his daughter. Bonnie’s school was on break and the two of them had been spending the day together, as they often do. “Mommy gets jealous because we talk too much,” Rodriguez said, smiling at his daughter, who looked up from her phone and grinned.
At 16 years old, Bonnie hasn’t yet lost interest in hanging out with her dad. Though she is approaching the most critical and—depending on who you’re asking—horrible teenage years, she maintained that she likes spending time with Rodriguez (though he of course was always nearby to hear her answer). But, like any teenager, Bonnie has a world of her own to tend to. She seems always to be carrying around a pad on which she draws detailed Manga cartoons. On Reddit, she watches videos of the recent train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. Some videos provide sound information while others do not. She’s seen videos of acid rain, dead fish, and weirdly sizzling coffee, she said, not quite sure what to make of them. Also on her phone, she chats with a German friend she’s made online. They talk about the January 6 insurrection and the general state of American politics. Her friend, she said, is glad he doesn’t have to live here.
Bonnie pays attention to the world around her, which makes Rodriguez proud. A shy girl with a round face and curly hair, she is the type of teen who doesn’t say much at first. His kid is smart, Rodriguez said at the coffee shop. “She has the potential.”
But potential is one thing. Rodriguez is aware that it’s going to take more than that to ensure a good life for her in the South Bronx. He worries how growing up there will affect her future. He frets over her chances of getting a good job, of staying healthy.
In a family totaling five children, one asthmatic sibling would align with the borough statistic that roughly one in every five kids suffers from the inflammatory disease. In the Rodriguez family, that kid is Matthew, Bonnie’s older brother. Asthma narrows the airways of the lungs, causing wheezing and shortness of breath. “It makes it hard for kids to run around and play,” Rodriguez said, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Economically and socially, the Bronx is where most poor people live,” Rodriguez went on. “The people in political power, they don’t care about that. Just send a truck with potatoes through here,” he said, referring to the fact that much of the food being consumed in New York City makes its way into the city through warehouses in the Bronx. Bonnie, thankfully, doesn’t suffer from asthma, Rodriguez said. On this warm winter day, she was, however, coughing lightly at San Marco’s Cafe.
Entering “butler” mode, Rodriguez soon ushered Bonnie into the family van to drop her off at home before heading to visit his mother. He slowed the car down as the two of them reached Noble Mansion, a rental high-rise in which they live. The pale yellow color of the building seemed almost vibrant against the gray backdrop of the sky. On the opposite side of the road, a red set of swings was equally luminous among the few trees surrounding the empty Noble Playground. A constant humming and the more than occasional honk of a horn could be heard from the nearby Cross Bronx Expressway. The streets were free of pedestrians.
Rush hour was approaching, and traffic was slowing as Rodriguez made his way toward Grand Concourse, a remarkably wide street in the South Bronx. His mother’s nursing home is there, as is Franz Sigel Park, where he sometimes meets up with friends to play dominoes. He also goes on his own to clean the park. No one has asked him to, he said, but the park is often littered. You have to take matters into your own hands, Rodriguez explained. The resources simply aren’t there in the Bronx.
As if to underscore his point, Rodriguez pointed to an abandoned truck by the side of the road we were driving on. “This has been parked here for months,” he said. “That doesn’t happen in Manhattan. People know who to call.” On the car stereo, “Heaven is a Place on Earth” was playing, as if the radio had decided to mock the moment.
Rodriguezpr efers the nostalgia of 1980s hits and alternates between those and classical music, “for when I want to elevate myself.” An avid reader and book collector, he keeps upwards of 3,000 books in the family’s apartment—a fact which Bonnie noted presents a spatial “problem.” He passes on the knowledge of his books to his daughter and constantly presents her with little dilemmas to navigate. (Should you accept a cup of coffee from a journalist? Do you leave said cup of coffee for someone else to clear?)
Between this education, his role as the family “butler,” and his community service, Rodriguez has created something of an ecosystem to provide his family with the things he feels they need to thrive in the South Bronx. “What happens here is not the same as what happens in White Plains,” he said, referring to a whiter, wealthier upstate city. “Everybody is paying the same taxes but the services are not the same.”
Rodriguez dropped me off at Cardinal Hayes High School, where the Army Corps of Engineers would be hosting a “community engagement” about their massive proposed infrastructure plan for New York City. He told me I looked “new” to the area, and that I should call him if I got lost. Then he drove off to visit his mother at the nursing home where she now lives.
A few hours later, the Army Corps of Engineers presented their plan in the high school auditorium. They had been criticized for not doing enough community outreach, and were holding this event in order to change that, they said.
The plan was initiated by the Obama administration in the wake of Hurricane Sandy to address the increasingly extreme weather conditions and manage future flood risk to the city. After years of study and debate, as well as a hiatus during the Trump Administration, the Corps had announced in September 2022 that it wanted to erect 12 giant, offshore gates and several waterfront barriers along the edges of the city. Construction would begin in 2030 and run until 2044; it would cost over $52 billion.
The plan included several nicely designed, elevated promenades in Manhattan—in Lower Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, and in parts of Harlem. But for the area in the South Bronx susceptible to flooding from the Harlem River, the engineers proposed a floodwall running along the Mott Haven waterfront. It would protect the area from some flooding, but it would also close off access to the water. The South Bronx wouldn’t be the only place in New York City getting a floodwall. But it would be one of very few places getting nothing but one. Perhaps more damningly, the report also made a brief note of the fact that the storm barriers put up to protect other burroughs might increase the risk of flooding in the Bronx.
To activists from the advocacy group South Bronx Unite, the plan looked like business as usual. For years, the group had been working on a waterfront restoration project in the lower part of the South Bronx, which they said would protect the area from future storm surges while opening up the waterfront around Mott Haven and Port Morris. Their plan had been acknowledged by the state and incorporated into a 2020 NYC Parks and Recreation management plan for the Bronx, with $2.7 million being allocated to the project. For a time, it looked like it might actually be realized.
What the federal agency of engineers was now proposing looked nothing like what South Bronx Unite had been envisioning, their Clean Air Program Coordinator, Leslie Vasquez, said at the hearing. Instead of securing the waterfront while making it accessible to residents, the Army Corps of Engineers was blocking off access to the water altogether.
The plan seemed like a “slap in the face,” the executive director of South Bronx Unite, Arif Ullah, said. It also looked like the South Bronx was going to be neglected in a way which, to the community, was all too familiar. Why was that?
Danielle Tomasso, a planner with the New York District Army Corps of Engineers, explained that they by no means intended to award some areas nicer waterfronts than others. Their plan was simply building on existing structures, she said. Where there had previously been a promenade, an elevated one would now take its place. Where there had been nothing, well, other solutions would be explored.
To Ullah, the argument seemed inherently flawed. “You’re simply going to perpetuate the injustices if you look at existing use,” he said.
The Army Corps of Engineers was listening to the concerns, Tomasso said. This was exactly why they had wanted to host this meeting in the first place. But, another Army Corps representative added, the plan was “non-political.” If it had disfavored certain areas, it was certainly not intentional. “We are just people who are planners,” she said.
To some researchers, the current cityscaping of American cities doesn’t seem neutral or apolitical at all.
Pablo Herreros Cantis spent years investigating the link between flood risk management and social equity in New York City. A research fellow at The New School and a Ph.D. candidate at the Basque Centre for Climate Change in Spain, Cantis said that what had become apparent to many researchers in recent years was just how much old policies such as redlining were still impacting communities and determining their exposure to climate change-related hazards.
“It inevitably comes from the inherited segregation that exists in many American cities,” he said. “It is so, so clear that the impacts of many different hazards are also going to be segregated because these neighborhoods have less access to green spaces.”
Liv Yoon, a former postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Climate School, had noticed how redlining has shaped the disadvantage of the South Bronx, too. Throughout the pandemic, she worked with South Bronx Unite to gather data related to issues with urban heat. Through her research she realized just how few parks and open spaces residents in the South Bronx had access to—and how a “so-called park” in the South Bronx was often “just a concrete flat with a swingset on it,” she said. This affected the health of residents and didn’t seem apolitical. In fact, Yoon had a hard time buying the argument that there was such a thing as neutrality at all.
“I mean, I just come from a research paradigm that nothing is apolitical,” she said. “I think everything is political. Even claiming that something is politically neutral is a political stance.”
Even among city officials, it seems fairly uncontroversial that the current design of the Bronx is putting the borough at a disadvantage. Though not commenting on the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan specifically, Lauren Smalls-Mantey, an environmental Systems Analyst at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the city is aware of how long-ago urban planning continues to put communities of color at a disadvantage. “The spatial distribution in New York City differs by neighborhood,” Smalls-Mantey said. “What we see is that Black and Brown neighborhoods in New York City have higher heat vulnerability compared to other neighborhoods in the city. And this is basically due to the structural racism and the historical racism.”
You’d be hard pressed finding someone who’d argue that the structures of the South Bronx are worth preserving or even expanding. Perhaps without realizing it, the Army Corps of Engineers were now risking doing just that with their proposed plan. “They’re not mal-intentioned,” Ullah, from South Bronx United, said. But, he added, “I think they have some really large blindspots.” (The Army Corps of Engineers did not return Planet A’s requests for comment.)
It is unlikely that any one isolated community project will be able to do for the environment of the South Bronx what large scale planning has done over time to bend the city into its current form. “There’s all these different mitigations we can do, like green roofs and all this,” Yoon said. “But, really, what we need to do is undo a century of development, because it’s the accumulation of these policies and urban planning that has unfolded, that has led to these inequities.” It will take a long time, and many initiatives and plans, to undo it. But plans that take things in the wrong direction will not help.
Some progress has been made. In 2022, the city allocated $2 million to the study of what can be done to lessen the health impact of the Cross Bronx Expressway. The year before, during Covid, it distributed free air-conditioners to nearly 73,000 elderly, low-income residents to relieve them of the intense heat of warming summers. What activists had spent years advocating for was slowly finding its way into small city budgets. The question remained whether it would be enough.
Alejandro Rodriguez came to the US, initially, to be with his mother, who had left the Dominican Republic a few years earlier. Now she would likely end her days here. But Rodriguez wanted to go home.
“One day you will look out the window and say, ‘I miss my home.’ It’s a philosophical concept,” he said when we were driving down the Grand Concourse. “No matter how long you are in this place, you will never belong.”
But for Bonnie, it’s different. “She was born here,” Rodriguez said. He will stay until he’s sure she can stand on her own feet—until the world around her is at least not working against her. “This is her place, so I want to make it better.”
For the time being, Rodriguez was not impressed by the Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to engage with his community. “They host these meetings asking us to ‘air your opinions.’ But they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.” He’d seen plenty of good intentions get squished by broken promises, which was part of the reason why he wasn’t going to leave Bonnie’s future up to chance.
On an early April morning, Rodriguez was bubbling with excitement as he picked up the phone. The pale spring sun was rising at a pace quickening day by day. Bonnie had gotten a summer internship with the Bronx River Alliance, just as he’d hoped when they first sat down at the community meeting. “We’re so excited by this!” he said, laughing. “We expect a lot of things from Bonnie.” The next stop would be college.
But the day will come, Rodriguez said, when he will go home; when Bonnie will have to decide for herself what to do with the opportunities he’s given her; when the ecosystem he’s built to protect his daughter will have to hold its own as he takes a step back. “You have to do more in order to accomplish your life—find your own style of life—because now, you’re on your own.” ◊
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