Amazingly, there doesn't appear to be a discussion topic on Urban Renewal. To me, it's mainly a negative subject. But there were probably some positives from it somewhere, sometime. 

 

Here's Boston in 1938 vs 2013. Note the whole West End was erased after the war, including its grid of wonderfully narrow streets that are great for pedestrians. Not so great for moving cars through. I will say that the Thoreau Path was actually a nice feature, however. 

 

1938:

 

2013:

 

You can toggle back and forth between the views on Twitter:

 

Most of the westside of this image of Cincinnati is, well, gone.

 

 

 

 

Thanks I-75!

 

IMO, the Big Dig didn't help as much as it could have. The linear park is "fine", but it doesn't really stitch downtown back to the waterfront areas since there's still big arterials and ramps down into the tunnel.

2 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

IMO, the Big Dig didn't help as much as it could have. The linear park is "fine", but it doesn't really stitch downtown back to the waterfront areas since there's still big arterials and ramps down into the tunnel.

 

I lived there when the elevated highway was still up.  It was actually better from a pedestrian standpoint in some spots because the overall width was narrower and traffic was generally at a standstill so you were free to walk almost continuously.  

 

Burying the highway through downtown was only a fraction of the overall project and mostly a cosmetic one.  Extending the Mass Pike beneath the Fort Port Channel and South Boston and across the harbor to Logan was a gigantic mobility improvement.  It reduced the chaos surrounding the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels.  

 

The I-93 interchange with the Tobin Bridge was also rebuilt as part of the Big Dig.  Overall, access to East Boston was dramatically improved.  The Silverline BRT now connects East Boston and South Station via the Ted Williams Tunnel.  This is a really big deal since it makes living in East Boston very practical for anyone who works in the big South Boston developments.  In the old days, reaching South Boston from East Boston meant taking the Blue Line and either walking there form Aquarium or changing two trains to get to South Boston, then a walk over the channel.  

 

 

 

3 hours ago, ColDayMan said:

Most of the westside of this image of Cincinnati is, well, gone.

 

I don't think that people understood back then that a lot of the activity in a downtown was thanks to neighborhood activity from those neighborhoods within walking distance.  So when the West End was savagely demolished, all sorts of incidental business no doubt disappeared from the central business district.  

 

 

16 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I don't think that people understood back then that a lot of the activity in a downtown was thanks to neighborhood activity from those neighborhoods within walking distance.  So when the West End was savagely demolished, all sorts of incidental business no doubt disappeared from the central business district.  

 

 

I've noticed that in a lot of cities - when the neighborhoods immediately surrounding downtown were 'renewed' and thus frequently depopulated, downtown retail suffered much more than when those proximal neighborhoods were restored. 

On 7/16/2020 at 11:10 AM, westerninterloper said:

I've noticed that in a lot of cities - when the neighborhoods immediately surrounding downtown were 'renewed' and thus frequently depopulated, downtown retail suffered much more than when those proximal neighborhoods were restored. 

 

We talk about German Village being "cut off" from downtown by the highway but the downtown merchants also lost the residents who lived on those blocks.  Obviously German Village wasn't built to the same density as the city neighborhoods in bigger cities but the point still stands. 

 

I don't know what thread this kinda belongs to, but directing Ohio's state liquor tax revenue towards identifying and remediating brownfield sites sounds like a good use. And if the federal government might match some of the investment?

Greater Ohio Policy Center - INVESTING IN BROWNFIELDS

"On February 23, House Bill 143 and Senate Bill 84 were introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate" so, mildly old news, but lots of opportunity. 

Cleveland News 5 - Proposed bills aim to use excess liquor revenue to fund cleanup of contaminated properties statewide

American cities used to have many more walkable, vibrant communities. So sad how we've destroyed so many great urban neighborhoods....

 

 

8 hours ago, KJP said:

American cities used to have many more walkable, vibrant communities. So sad how we've destroyed so many great urban neighborhoods....

 

 

I love following that page, but also hate it. It’s insane how much was destroyed so people could move through a heart of a city in 2 minutes. 

Then you'll hate Atlanta....

 

 

4 minutes ago, KJP said:

Then you'll hate Atlanta....

 

 

Yikes, that is awful. I bet they would have a lot better traffic if the city was still laid out like this. 

Do I need to pull the legendary aerial of Houston?

 

I don't know if this article was posted here two years ago, but it remains interesting (to me, at least).

 

Lessons From the Rise and Fall of the Pedestrian Mall
Car-free shopping streets swept many U.S. cities in the 1960s and ’70s, but few examples survived. Those that did could be models for today’s “open streets.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-09/why-america-fell-out-of-love-with-the-pedestrian-mall?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=citylab

In Ottawa, the 1960's Sparks St pedestrian mall has peraisted to this day, while the Rideau St. bus only blocks have reverted to general traffic.  Then there is the Huron Rd. Mall behind The Halle.

An awesome overview on how NIMBY's in San Fran furthered issues with unaffordable housing/issues with homelessness. (from 16:26 to 20:10)

I'd like to see what the cities are represented by the dots along the line and not so many displaced

 

https://x.com/Trivisonno/status/1728485948227252575?s=20

 

I remember when Pruitt-Igoe was built in St Louis as "urban renewal" back in the 1950's. They tore down a lot of old housing stock to build it and nearby I-44. It was a great place if you wanted to warehouse people. It's gone now and good riddance.

This info looks flawed at best and malinformation to push an agenda at worst. Not saying this topic doesn't have merit but I looked into this using the interactive maps for Cleveland & Chicago (the cities I'm most familiar with) and there are several omissions. For example this doesn't include Lakeview Terrace and Tremont Point in Cleveland, or Cabrini Green in Chicago (like how do you omit the largest urban renewal area in Chicago?). These areas were mostly white when these renewal projects happened.  

 

This also does not appear to include displacement due to highway construction, which seems to have impacted mostly majority white areas in Cleveland (at the time at least). Also can say the same about Chicago. 

 

The maps: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogram