How much old housing was torn down in your region? with a map

[Mattks]

Of course everyone likes to look at their homes states and I can't help but notice the Kansas border is very visible with Oklahoma and Missouri. Not a night and day difference, but significantly more older homes.

Seeing this map oddly made me think of John Grisham's book, The Painted House. But there were lots of crappy houses built in Mississippi that were not built for the long term in mind.

[manitopiaaa]

Fascinating thread. I wonder if there's a way to extricate when these buildings were torn down.

My guess is that the "perfect" 60s were to blame. Architecturally-speaking, the 1960s was a disaster for American architecture and our housing stock. And this isn't even focusing on the loss of Penn Station.

[Gerania]

Originally Posted by LINative

To Nei, the OP.

Are you saying that only 11% of Mississippi's pre WW2 housing stock remains? If so, that is indeed a shocking statistic, especially because Mississippi does not see tear down redevelopment pressures that more populated areas receive.

I hate to say this but the only reason I can think of that Mississippi must have had a lot of really old substandard housing like shacks or cabins or something that people abandoned when they could.

I wonder how much was lost to natural and man made disaster. Not everything was torn down, or torn down by choice.

[LINative]

Originally Posted by Gerania

I wonder how much was lost to natural and man made disaster. Not everything was torn down, or torn down by choice.

I just saw this post, sorry for the late response.



Well if you think about it, three natural disasters mainly strike Mississippi - hurricanes, tornados and I guess forest fires. I guess you include termite damage lol but other states have that too.

Hurricanes - Southern Mississippi would logically be the area most at risk from hurricane force winds and tidal surge so you would think there would be the least amount of old surviving housing. But if you look at the OPs map, it is the exact opposite, Southern Mississippi is where the most old housing survives! So it is not hurricanes that are destroying Mississippi's housing stock.

Tornados - Tornados do strike Mississippi but to the extent that they wiped out the majority of the state's housing stock since before WW2? I really doubt it and besides look at the "Tornado Alley" states and you can see that they actually have older housing then Mississippi.

Forest/brush fires - similar to tornados.

Conclusion - I think you make a good point that Mississippi lost some housing due to natural disasters but IMO it is not the majority.

[nei]

anyone have an idea how old these Mississippi houses are? They look like they could be before 1940:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1601...7i13312!8i6656