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Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,462,489 times
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Depends on whether you're talking about the 1960s (give or take 20 years) program which leveled millions of pre WWII buildings so gigantic freeways could snake through our cities
--or-
The truly urban renewal going on today where walkable neighborhoods are being repopulated and rebuilt - this is a wonderful thing
Before the 1960s (sub)urban renewal most inner cities in the US were safe, vibrant, and contained all races and classes of people. Today most American inner cities are unsafe, filled with abandoned buildings and lots, and composed of the poorest segments of the minority population with a few of the richest segments of the White population, with a nearly extinct middle class presence among all racial groups.
I think I've posted this pictures before, it's from a website that claims Louisville KY lost more of it's historic buildings to "urban renewal" than most European cities lost during 2 world wars
Depends on whether you're talking about the 1960s (give or take 20 years) program which leveled millions of pre WWII buildings so gigantic freeways could snake through our cities
--or-
The truly urban renewal going on today where walkable neighborhoods are being repopulated and rebuilt - this is a wonderful thing
Before the 1960s (sub)urban renewal most inner cities in the US were safe, vibrant, and contained all races and classes of people. Today most American inner cities are unsafe, filled with abandoned buildings and lots, and composed of the poorest segments of the minority population with a few of the richest segments of the White population, with a nearly extinct middle class presence among all racial groups.
The trend of new urbanism is positive... that didn't really start until the late 80s with Seaside, FL... but really got going in the 1990s. A lot of the stuff before new urbanism was quite destructive.
Definitely hurt. I was just looking at a book today about how they tore down the West End and Scollay Square and so much else to make way for offices in Boston. Terrible sad. What was there before was so much better than the disgusting City Hall that is there now.
Depends on whether you're talking about the 1960s (give or take 20 years) program which leveled millions of pre WWII buildings so gigantic freeways could snake through our cities
--or-
The truly urban renewal going on today where walkable neighborhoods are being repopulated and rebuilt - this is a wonderful thing
Before the 1960s (sub)urban renewal most inner cities in the US were safe, vibrant, and contained all races and classes of people. Today most American inner cities are unsafe, filled with abandoned buildings and lots, and composed of the poorest segments of the minority population with a few of the richest segments of the White population, with a nearly extinct middle class presence among all racial groups.
I think I've posted this pictures before, it's from a website that claims Louisville KY lost more of it's historic buildings to "urban renewal" than most European cities lost during 2 world wars
Notable Louisville buildings lost...
Columbia Building
Warren Chapel
First Louisville Post Office
Washington Building
Chestnut Street being leveled
I was going more towards the urban renewal of the 60's and 70's.
I was going more towards the urban renewal of the 60's and 70's.
That was the worst!! That's when many beautiful historic buildings and neighborhoods were leveled to build ugly boxy government buildings, urban shopping malls, and freeways.
Read these books to get some of the History of it.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities.... Jane Jacobs
Suburban Nation......Andres Duany and Elizatheth Plater-Zyberk
Geography of Nowhere .... Howard Kuntsler
an d there are more.. just the first few that come to mind.
North Minneapolis is home to one of the first public housing projects in the country -- the Sumner-Glenwood projects (that have since been demolished and replaced by a new neighborhood). That was in the late 1930s. What alot of people don't remember is that urban renewal began before the War. It just wasn't as big on account of the Depression and the War. Within 30 years, half of downtown Minneapolis was gone. In Minneapolis, we were still tearing down huge old hotels right into the early 1990s. Here, the problem wasn't as much the demolitions themselves (as if it could have been worse), it was the fact that they tore down buildings before there were proposals for new projects to take their place. There were empty lots for thirty years in some cases. They also didn't discriminate between good buildings and decrepit ones, it was decided on a block to block basis. I feel that part was nefarious, corporate headquarters love to have an entire block where they don't have to work around other buildings.
Today, most large cities would be embarrassed to do something like that. It still seems like a problem in smaller cities and towns, though. Shakopee, an old river town of about 20,000 people near Mpls., decided that it is going to demolish an 1870s brick mansion across from the courthouse for a parking ramp. If you have 300,000 odd some dollars laying around, you could make a pretty profit.
That was the worst!! That's when many beautiful historic buildings and neighborhoods were leveled to build ugly boxy government buildings, urban shopping malls, and freeways.
Read these books to get some of the History of it.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities.... Jane Jacobs
Suburban Nation......Andres Duany and Elizatheth Plater-Zyberk
Geography of Nowhere .... Howard Kuntsler
an d there are more.. just the first few that come to mind.
I just started Jane Jacobs last book today (Dark Ages Ahead, 2004). That woman was a seer. She saw the housing bubble a mile away.
Yes, Jane Jacobs was a genius.. and she was self taught.. she had really keen insight into how cities really work.
It actually goes all the way back to the "garden city" movement that started in the turn of the last century, then the embracement of the Corbusier "Radiant City" Model, then the rise of Bauhaus architecture, which favored boxy, utilitarian buildings over the more ornate craftsmen and Beaux Arts buildings. But it was The WPA and new Deal of the Roosevelt administration that really kickstarted the real negative urban renewal... the institutional housing projects and similar Big government buildings that all had that Stalinist look. Then you had the embracement of International style architecture in the 50s.. Big Rectangles and boxes, every building looked alike .... that lasted up through the 1980s.
Then you had some of the worst urban renewal nightmares with the Great Society programs of The Johnson Administration ..Think Cabrini Green in Chicago.. and other horrors.
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