Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
One thing I've noticed and have always been curious about is why many American cities built freeways along their waterfronts. The ones that immediately come to mind are New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Chicago. I imagine most were built around the same time, and was it just meant to be as unobtrusive to the city as possible? It seems somewhat unfortunate to lose out on that waterfront, but better than ploughing right through the city I suppose.
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America didnt give a fuck about its history back in the 50s-80s and urban renewal was rampant. Basically all of our cities were destroyed during this time and are just now recovering from the urban renewal from the 30s-80s. Luckily the highways built along the waterfront for the most part in Pittsburgh was just rail yards or industrial areas. Luckily some of this countries most well known urban areas were spared destruction like New Orleans French Quarter which some asshat during the 50s wanted to completely destroy and run a freeway through. Also, Robert Moses wanted to destroy lower Manhattan and run highways all through it. But so much was destroyed. Cities like Houston, Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, etc all had huge historic neighborhoods ruined and torn down by urban renewal and highways built during the mid 1900s.