Midwest Cities Eviscerated By Expressways & "Urban Renewal": 1950 vs. Today sliders

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Another issue I have is that the right of way left over by the demolished freeway often gets taken up by a rather expansive arterial road, dressed up as a "boulevard", but really just another traffic funnel.

milwaukee ripped down an underused expressway spur that cut across the northern edge of its downtown and replaced it with one of those boulevard-style replacements. yes, it's definitely less obtrusive/more elegant than the elevated expressway it replaced, but it's still essentially just a slower-paced auto-sewer.

it doesn't help matters that the vast majority of the land freed up by the expressway demolition that was supposed to be redeveloped in an urban fashion is still sitting vacant as a big hole in the city fabric over 10 years later. maybe someday in the far off future when all of the land has been redeveloped the area will feel more normal.

[soleri]

Originally Posted by RCDC

Yay for NIMBYs!

Although I assume you're being ironic, NIMBYism really is a perplexing issue. On the one hand, you want to preserve wonderful things. On the other, that takes money, and as Detroit shows, you simply can't will those resources into being. I live in Portland, which does a better job than most in addressing the trade-offs involved. Still, this city is awash in cars, freeways, parking lots and garages. No American city is close to being pristine while some are actually hamstrung in their development for a lack of good urban fabric (e.g., Phoenix).

I used to live in Denver way back when. The city had torn down a king's ransom in old brick buildings during its 60s' urban renewal frenzy but downtown was still the premier shopping area for the region. All that changed during the shale oil boom of the late 70s and early 80s. Department stores abandoned downtown as real-estate speculation exploded. Downtown lost more of its priceless urban fabric as old buildings were torn down for parking lots on downtown's edges. Freeways had done their worst damage when constructed but their actual cost was not fully seen for several decades. Denver would be, IMO, the Paris of North America if it had kept most of its lovely Victoriana. But no city, with the possible exception of New York, successfully dealt with the problem of explosive growth in car travel.

New York City's losses like Penn Station need to be put in context. It's hard to imagine tearing down such a priceless gem today but New York was so rich in its architectural assets that it didn't like a major issue then. You can't keep everything old - cities don't work that way - but you need to keep enough to remind yourself why you love cities. There's good NIMBYism and bad. I think the bad is simply the kind of stuff where people are afraid of losing their parking, or resistant to change just because. We can debate this issue forever but I think most of us are somewhere in the middle, understanding cities are organic, living entities that continue to evolve, and hopefully, become even more wonderful over time.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by memph

Anyone have good pics of Pittsburgh's Hill District? It seems to have been quite dense, on par with OTR and denser than central St Louis neighbourhoods, at least in terms of population density. The inner North Side seems to have been quite dense too.

Or how about the neighbourhood that was demolished for Empire State Plaza and related auto infrastructure in Albany?

Pittsburgh aerial, 1931. The hill district is the left side of the picture.





Here it is with an overlay of what was to come, the circle being the Civic Arena and slightly new street plan and everything around the stadium for 60 years has been parking.





Civic Arena under contrsuction early 1950's.





According to Wikipedia, about 8,000 people were displaced when razing the neighborhoods. Many poor black American's ended up in places like Homewood which are now the highest crime rate areas of the city.


The arena was razed a couple years ago and the lower Hill District is about to look like this in the next couple of years of development. Mostly low rise new urbanist style with parks and lots of parking.

[Steely Dan]

^ OUCH!

that 3rd picture is actually painful to view.

so much senseless destruction.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

What do people think about the trend to replace aging Eisenhower-era downtown highways with freeways that have a better, less destructive alignment but also a significant capacity increase? Providence did this, and so did Oklahoma City. It's sort of a Pyrrhic victory.

Another issue I have is that the right of way left over by the demolished freeway often gets taken up by a rather expansive arterial road, dressed up as a "boulevard", but really just another traffic funnel.

Yeah, the big problem with inner-city freeways was that they tore through the urban fabric and divided neighbourhoods, both psychologically and through reduced connectivity. The hope would be that by demolishing the freeway the original street grid could be restored and redeveloped, but instead you just end up with a boulevard with a wide swath of park. More pleasant than a freeway, but still a barrier.

Case in point: Boston's Central Artery. Even after burying it there remains a big "scar" on the urban form.

[JManc]

^ Ground level, the green area resulting from the Big Dig is rather nice and adds a lot to the appeal of the areas adjacent to it. In warm weather, parks are full of people.

[nei]

Originally Posted by JManc

On the flipside, how would have all these buildings aged? Demographics and socioeconomics were rapidly changing to where upkeep suffered greatly...look at a lot of the neighborhoods that did remain intact in 2nd tier and smaller cities. Even NYC was in rough shape until the early 90's. Albany NY has wonderful brownstones (though lost a lot to Empire Center) but if you look closely, many of them are in need of a lot of TLC. And Albany is not exactly a thriving area so the buildings are maintained barely enough to meet code and not much else.

Meh. I don't see not perfect condition has a problem. They're still in good shape enough some want to live in them. Even Troy has seen some reinvestment. I prefer slightly run down historic neighborhoods to none at all.

[nei]

Originally Posted by JManc

^ Ground level, the green area resulting from the Big Dig is rather nice and adds a lot to the appeal of the areas adjacent to it. In warm weather, parks are full of people.

Hmm. I never found it a spot I'd want to linger much, as it's surrounded by wide, noisy boulevards. My favorite spot in the North End:

http://www.bostonzest.com/2012/06/greenough-lane-then-and-now.html

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by JManc

look at a lot of the neighborhoods that did remain intact in 2nd tier and smaller cities. Even NYC was in rough shape until the early 90's.

In NYC, the neighborhoods that remained intact, like Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, etc are super expensive now. Starting price for a Park Slope home nowadays is $5+ million.

[JManc]

Compared to what was there, the difference is night and day. They will never be able to recreate what was lost before the expressway was built but the area now is infinitely more inviting to the public.

[Ant131531]

Honestly, in a city like Boston, it's not that big of a deal. In fact, the parks there now are probably more inviting than what was there prior to the highway. Cities needs parks and greenspace to balance out the concrete and steel.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Pittsburgh aerial, 1931. The hill district is the left side of the picture.

Here it is with an overlay of what was to come, the circle being the Civic Arena and slightly new street plan and everything around the stadium for 60 years has been parking.

Civic Arena under contrsuction early 1950's.

According to Wikipedia, about 8,000 people were displaced when razing the neighborhoods. Many poor black American's ended up in places like Homewood which are now the highest crime rate areas of the city.


The arena was razed a couple years ago and the lower Hill District is about to look like this in the next couple of years of development. Mostly low rise new urbanist style with parks and lots of parking.

Thanks, so it looks like it was mostly 2-3 storey brick apartments and row houses? So maybe structurally a bit less dense than OTR but more crowded?

Do you have any good closer up aerials or street level pictures?

[memph]

Originally Posted by JManc

On the flipside, how would have all these buildings aged? Demographics and socioeconomics were rapidly changing to where upkeep suffered greatly...look at a lot of the neighborhoods that did remain intact in 2nd tier and smaller cities. Even NYC was in rough shape until the early 90's. Albany NY has wonderful brownstones (though lost a lot to Empire Center) but if you look closely, many of them are in need of a lot of TLC. And Albany is not exactly a thriving area so the buildings are maintained barely enough to meet code and not much else.

With respect to suburbs, I think people (esp. on this forum) forget what they represented back in the late 40's on up. Cities were extremely crowded, very dirty and polluted. It's one thing to look at sepia photos of dense prewar neighborhoods in their prime but cities back then were different animals than they are today to those that lived in them.

With that said, we as a society dealt with all this horribly...urban renewal was a monumental mistake of epic proportions.

Part of Old Quebec City looked pretty run-down back in the day. Here some pictures of what Petit Champlain used to look like.


http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/scripts/l...r=MP-0000.3202.1-2&Lang=2&imageID=316144

Today
https://www.google.ca/maps/@46.8125013,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sFei36V974FjvW_VoO1xTnQ!2e0

A bit more recent (I think) from a slightly different angle

http://numicanada.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12983


http://numicanada.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12983

Looks like around here
https://www.google.ca/maps/@46.8116141,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1s3u90SQeAVbbUiSxvKj_Oow!2e0

Center Square in Albany did not look run down, other neighbourhoods were more variable.

A city that actually did look really run down was Budapest in the 90s (probably before too). Most of the city looked like this.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@47.481574,19...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sQrmwxdzeNNF3Fysjq0k8Qw!2e0
https://www.google.ca/maps/@47.4920055,1...3m4!1e1!3m2!1ssdKqLb7crmWQmaFIl1T9vA!2e0

More outlying core neighbourhoods like those above still have a lot of run-down buildings, but the core is experiencing a lot of revitalization which is spread further and further towards the outer core.

[JManc]

Albany brownstones have a worn feel about them. Even in the better preserved areas. A few are pristine but most could stand a fresh coat of paint and interior updates.

[Sun]

Below show some of the impacts of putting Interstate 94 through Minneapolis and St. Paul - A lot of people got screwed.

Minneapolis:


In the picture below you can see some of the beginning of the demolition to prepare for the Interstate 94 a few years later.

-----The two photos above are from this wonderful site: http://streets.mn/2014/03/27/then-now-lyndale-and-hennepin/#lightbox/1/

Here's the current view of the same area I edited from Bing.com/maps:


Here's a close up of some of the demolition:
-Photo from The Minnesota Historical Society and this webpage: http://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-blog-c...-minneapolis-pyrrhic-victory-lake-street



And for St. Paul, here are three aerials of the same area from 1947, 1957 and 1966. The Rondo neighborhood was completely decimated.

St. Paul, Rondo neighborhood (These are all of the same area!):
1947


1957


1966

----The three photos above all came from this great blog post: http://hizeph400.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html


The result in 1968:

---Photograph above from this article: http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2014/06/linking-twin-cities-1968-attention-was-i-94

[memph]

Originally Posted by JManc

Albany brownstones have a worn feel about them. Even in the better preserved areas. A few are pristine but most could stand a fresh coat of paint and interior updates.

This is about as worn as Center Square got when I was there

https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.6546597,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sGD954rgoL7n-iSZK_5X25w!2e0

I haven't been into any of the homes, but from they outside they looked quite alright.

Now this red house in Toronto would be an example of a house that really could use a fresh coat of paint (among other things) but I haven't seen anything like that in Center Square.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6592593,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPZdNxTx1hUbSa-pqG65y3g!2e0

[JManc]

Originally Posted by memph

This is about as worn as Center Square got when I was there

https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.6546597,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sGD954rgoL7n-iSZK_5X25w!2e0

I haven't been into any of the homes, but from they outside they looked quite alright.

Now this red house in Toronto would be an example of a house that really could use a fresh coat of paint (among other things) but I haven't seen anything like that in Center Square.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6592593,-...3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPZdNxTx1hUbSa-pqG65y3g!2e0

I was looking to move there in 2009 and visit often and when I was apartment hunting and I only wanted to live in those types of brownstones and most of them were "ok" but seen better days. The interiors were dire need of updating not aesthetically or superficially but functionally. Lark St. is one of the trendier spots in town and pricier and thus kept up. With a minimal amount of investment, most of Albany's buildings could be made pristine and up-to-date but they would command higher rents and Albany is pricey as it is and not a thriving area economically. Nearby Troy is a gem as well but also "worn out" looking as well.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by memph

Thanks, so it looks like it was mostly 2-3 storey brick apartments and row houses? So maybe structurally a bit less dense than OTR but more crowded?

Do you have any good closer up aerials or street level pictures?

It DID seem to be somewhat low quality 2-3 story architecture. The thing about Over the Rhine in Cincinnati that made it unique was the height. Instead of 2 story urban density OTR is like 4-6 stories making it feel more like the low rise parts of Manhattan than a Midwestern city.



The Hill District:

"The Hill, or "Little Harlem" as it was referred to from the '30s thru the '50s, was one of the elite African-American neighborhoods in America. It was home to one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the country, as well as one of its hottest clubs, The Crawford Grill, which was owned by Gus Greenlee.

The Hill District was fraying around the edges by the dawn of the 1950s. The city of Pittsburgh, hot on the idea of urban renewal and needing a place to erect a new arena, decided to completely demolish the now-decaying lower Hill District. More than 8,000 residents and over 400 businesses were displaced, effectively changing the Hill forever.

The Hill took on further damage in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Racial tensions had been building in Pittsburgh for years when the assassination occurred, and King's senseless murder ignited the long-simmering powder keg. The National Guard was called in to enforce a curfew on an angry community, and the riots, which began April 5, 1968, raged until April 12. The week of violence saw 505 fires, $620,000 in property damage, one death and 926 arrests."

[MonkeyRonin]

Boston retained a pretty huge stock of cohesive, historic neighbourhoods which have mostly survived intact and thrived. It did however have a few notable losses in the form of the Central Artery, City Hall, and West End redevelopment. More or less all of this stuff here is now gone.

All from here. Really interesting read: http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10814


























West End:

[Centropolis]

worth repeating.