How does interstate construction harm communities? (map, suburb, highway, downtown)
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I've heard the destruction of the south Bronx compared to ww 2 bomb damage. And I think some German observers agreed.
But not 30 houses
There are famous pictures of the Lower East Side of Manhatan (Alphabet City) which look like bomb damage. But if you destroy houses for a highway you remove them completely, you don't leave burnt and ruined shells and piles of rubble. Well, unless you're the city of Newark, but they DID finally clean up the factory they knocked down and left as a rubble pile a few years ago.
There are famous pictures of the Lower East Side of Manhatan (Alphabet City) which look like bomb damage. But if you destroy houses for a highway you remove them completely, you don't leave burnt and ruined shells and piles of rubble. Well, unless you're the city of Newark, but they DID finally clean up the factory they knocked down and left as a rubble pile a few years ago.
Didn't I post the alphabet city one in the NYC forum? While rubble is terrible, an elevated highway through alphabet city sounds unpleasant
NYC left the west side highway in decay for a while, saw an online claim that burnt our car was left there for five years
30 houses, maybe not--how about 10,000, over an area of more than a square mile? That's how many houses (not counting hundreds of businesses) redevelopment and highway construction leveled in downtown Sacramento in the 1950s and 1960s, at the time a city of less than 200,000. So 10% of a city displaced, not by bombs, but by bulldozers. And that number is pretty small compared to the effects redevelopment had on many American cities, many of which still haven't recovered. And yes, in some ways the redevelopers were inspired by the bombed-out cities of Europe, wiped clean by war and rebuilt via the Marshall Plan. Instead of B-17s, we used eminent domain and "blight" declarations!
Are there plans for more freeways that will destroy neighborhoods in the future? Or is this mostly discussion about destructive freeway construction that happened in the past?
Freeways aren't being torn through downtowns that much anymore, but new highway construction can still hurt cities even if it is done in greenfield or on rural land. But yes, most of the discussion is based on the still-continuing repercussions of decisions that were made in the 50s and 60s. In many cities, the disruption caused by highway construction is still an ongoing issue.
30 houses, maybe not--how about 10,000, over an area of more than a square mile? That's how many houses (not counting hundreds of businesses) redevelopment and highway construction leveled in downtown Sacramento in the 1950s and 1960s, at the time a city of less than 200,000. So 10% of a city displaced, not by bombs, but by bulldozers. And that number is pretty small compared to the effects redevelopment had on many American cities, many of which still haven't recovered. And yes, in some ways the redevelopers were inspired by the bombed-out cities of Europe, wiped clean by war and rebuilt via the Marshall Plan. Instead of B-17s, we used eminent domain and "blight" declarations!
Most weren't for freeways. They were because Sacramento decided to depopulate downtown, especially West End and Japan Town. Like most Redevelopment, it caused what has thus far been irreparable damage. Paved with good intentions, sure.
I'll take an Interstate over a redevelopment plan. At leas the former is less destructive and provides some benefit.
Both worked in combination, malloric: redevelopment cleared the land for office buildings, highways provided an easy way for those office workers to get in and out of downtown without having to otherwise interact with it economically. Tough to have one without the other--and the highways wiped out the last sections of Japantown and the Labor Market that redevelopment hadn't.
Not really. NYC and San Francisco were both getting that many people into the cities before highways were common place. But Sacramento has just been that kind of city forever. To this day it still ignores the parts of the city where the population lives chosing to spend $20 million on an Ed Hardy-themed Pizza joint/mermaid bar, $200 a night hotels, nearly $1,200 per square foot (or $30 million) to remove a few units of affordable housing. It's always been a horribly run city with the basic agenda of not caring about much beyond amusement park amenities for the suburban communities that surround it.
Unfortunately, the surbanites would rather stay in the suburbs where most of the live and work anyway. Why go into the lousy K Street mall when you have Arden Fair or Galeria?
"Not really" is my response to your post as well. The idea that cities can succeed by encouraging suburbanites to drive downtown and spend money is fundamentally flawed--the cities that are succeeding are the ones attracting people who want to live in cities, not trying to remake their downtown into something vaguely suburb-like and hoping the people who don't like cities will be fooled.
But hey, the pizza at the Ed Hardy pizza joint is pretty good, and I can walk to the lousy K Street Mall, while going to the Galleria is an all-day adventure in suburban suckage. However, I'm already downtown, don't need a freeway at all to get there.
Pretty much nobody except Sacramento still thinks that cities can succeed solely by encouraging suburbanites to drive (or even more hilariously, take transit) downtown to spend their money. Actually, Sacramento probably doesn't even believe that anymore. Lately they've been more focused on paying for cameo residents to replace a few of the old residents it had when it decided to depopulate downtown. That's proving to be a very slow and costly process especially since Moonbeam took away the honey jar of free moneys. Getting actual residents who aren't paid to live there by the taxpayer is even less successful.
The Galleria isn't really concerned about getting urbanites on transit to spend all day getting to and from the mall like Sacramento keeps thinking will happen in reverse. There are actual people with money that live in the area that shop there. For the small middle-class population that Sacramento hasn't driven off to the suburbs by its Amusement Park for Suburbanites and Lobbyists First policies, Arden makes more sense. It's a quick 10-20 minute drive from the suburban middle-class areas of Sacramento (East Sac, Land Park, Pocket, North Natomas), not much longer than K Street would be.
Things are improving a little bit. They're actually using the Measure U funding as was intended by voters even though it's not required they don't spend it on building Ed Hardy-themed pizza parlors, bars, arenas, marinas, luxury hotels, night clubs, or the usual things the city spends money on.
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