Quote:
Originally Posted by skysoar
I believe quite a few American cities lack street vibrancy because of Urban Renewal projects during the 60s and 70s. Cities like my hometown of Akron, destroyed many lower- rise buildings in vast sections of downtown that were vibrant with old stores, offices, older hotels, dentist offices, bars etc,, And they were replaced with five or six new buildings with very little street activity. That is why Chrissie Hynde who is from Akron, and the Pretenders wrote " My City Was Gone". I appreciate cities like Denver, Nashville, and some others that have done a great job of preserving much of their older vibrant low-rise urban core neighborhoods.
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Most American cities didn’t have much to begin with because of the time period in which they were built.
People on this forum talk about “pre-war” (meaning prior to WW2) as if that is the dividing line between vibrant walkable urbanity and suburbs, but really things started to go downhill earlier.
The interwar period was already reflecting the growing popularity of the automobile, and streetcars didn’t really encourage great urbanity frankly. Even prior to WW1 you had cookie cutter suburbs being developed, because of cheaply mass produced building components.
In a British context, that was the last of the “period” styles architecturally (Edwardian, from 1901 to WW1). But late Victorian suburbs are already pretty boring in terms of pedestrian street experience (albeit transit-friendly). To get what I consider a great urban streetscape for the UK, you need to be in an area that was developed in the early Victorian or Georgian periods (from the early part of the 18th century, up until the mid/late 19th c.).