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Old Posted Jul 19, 2019, 3:16 AM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Handro View Post
It’s not just Phoenix, most American cities were decimated by urban renewal and the migration of families to the auto-centric suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.

Check this out: http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/12/60yrsmidwest/

In Chicago, entire neighborhoods full of dense urbanity were destroyed to make way for the expressway and parking lots.
And yet that didn't happen in San Francisco (and New York and some other places).

In San Francisco, the neighborhoods that were abandoned were fairly quickly refilled with newcomers, many of them famously gay, who renovated them and made them nicer places to live than ever. And the freeway construction was halted by citizen action. Whatever parking lots there have been in the city for decades have been almost entirely transitional--a way to make money from land intended for eventual development while money for such development was accumulated and/or the bureaucratic approval process was navigated.

The closest SF came to the process you are describing came in only two neighborhoods: The Fillmore and a portion of South of Market around 4rd and 4th Streets once known as "Skid Row". Both those areas were bulldozed for redevelopment like in other cities but have, by now, been pretty much rebuilt and are once again active neighborhoods (if different in character--the Fillmore's active jazz club scene has never really revived and Skid Row's low income housing has been replaced by luxury hotels and apartment towers along with Moscone Center).

The "old" Fillmore

https://www.sfmta.com/blog/22-fillmo...tten-funicular

Approximately same area today:

https://www.instantstreetview.com/@3....13h,-8.05p,1z

Last edited by Pedestrian; Jul 19, 2019 at 3:34 AM.
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