urban renewal and planning disasters

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by King Kill 'em

^New York I think started urban renewal the wrong way like everyone else (destroying a whole neighborhood at once instead of piece by piece and only what was necessary) but ended up with ended up producing all right stuff. Part of that's due to the city already being so dense and walkable but part of that is also probably due to architects and developers knowing what they were doing.

No, it's because Manhattan didn't fall the way other core cities did.

In most American cities, most of the vacant lots we like to blame on urban renewal were actually created by private landowners that saw parking as more profitable than a building, or vacant land as preferable to a money-losing building. This only made sense in the context of a collapsing urban economy.

NY, Boston, DC, SF, and to some extent Chicago managed to escape this problem, as the core (or at least portions of it) remained desirable, and landowners didn't face the dilemma of buildings that lost money. In New York specifically, landlords responded to a decline in the market by scaling back on maintenance until the buildings were profitable again. This led to a lot of rat and roach-infested apartments, but it didn't lead to teardowns. The urban renewal in New York was an attempt to provide higher-quality housing than what the private market was offering.

[Crawford]

Urban renewal has little to do with private owners and whether or not they built parking lots or retained buildings. It's large-scale, top-down govt. clearing of large parcels of land using state and federal dollars.

[ardecila]

^ That's my point. A lot of the vacancy-ridden neighborhoods posted on this thread were not, in fact, the result of urban renewal.

[toddguy]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...ville-downtown

Good God...those last two pics. They might as well have dropped an atom bomb on it. Hiroshima appears to have fared only slightly worse. Damn.

[photoLith]

Here in Pittsburgh almost all of the Hill district just east of downtown was completed raised for a horribly ugly stadium and parking lots. It used to be the most dense urban neighborhood in the city then it was cut off from downtown by highways and the stadium then today it's nearly all gone, replaced by ugly public housing and urban prairie. It's horrible what they did to that once rich with history neighborhood. And another entire neighborhood, Allegheny City was completely leveled in the 60s or 70s for horribly ugly high rise housing and what is now an enormous failed mall. So much stupidity destroyed so much much of all of our cities.

[jd3189]

I wonder how urban Jacksonville was compared to Miami at the time. Jax is still Florida's largest city but now it is a city-county sort of system when it was probably just the county seat at the time.

[King Kill 'em]

Originally Posted by ardecila

No, it's because Manhattan didn't fall the way other core cities did.

What are you talking about? The city essentially went to hell during the 70s and 80s and didnt come back until the 90s.

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I wonder how urban Jacksonville was compared to Miami at the time. Jax is still Florida's largest city but now it is a city-county sort of system when it was probably just the county seat at the time.

Roughly around the same size and density between the Florida Land Boom and through the end of WWII.

However, Jax was an older industrial city in decline by 1960, while Miami was preparing to get a boost from Castro taking over Cuba in 1959.

At the time, Jax's city leaders believed their density, industrial waterfront, congested downtown, lack of parking, etc. was blight and the best way to clear it was through demolition and redevelopment. It also did not help that the public school system was disacredited and many members of the corrupt council indicted.

Unfortunately, the highways and "need" for parking were tools used to "revitalize" its industrial image in the second half of the 20th century. Consolidation came in 1968, making matters worse. While Miami could somewhat focus on its own 35 square miles, the 30 square mile built out city of Jax had +700 new square miles of cheap undeveloped land to sprawl out over.


1960

Miami
291,688 -- 34.2 square miles -- 8,529 residents/square mile

Jacksonville
201,030 -- 30.2 square miles -- 6,657 residents/square mile



1950

Miami
249,276 -- 34.2 square miles -- 7,289 residents/square mile

Jacksonville
204,517 -- 30.2 square miles -- 6,772 residents/square mile



1930

Jacksonville
129,549 -- 26.4 square miles -- 4,907 residents/square mile

Miami
110,637 -- 43.0 square miles -- 2,573 residents/square mile

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Was SF a bit troubled economically following WW2? Often the most aggressive cities with urban renewal were unusually flush with cash. You can see this in Europe, too, where the poorer countries often have better city centers today because they didn't have the money to following modernist principles following WW2. Spain and Italy have much better city centers than the UK and Sweden on average (of course Germany had no choice but to rebuild).

No, the lack of large-scale demolition in the core of San Francisco (excepting Golden Gate Center and the bridge/freeway stuff) wasn't due to economic malaise. San Franciscans reacted very negatively to early 'urban renewal' in the Fillmore District as well as in areas destroyed by the insertion of the Embarcadero and Central freeways. There were plans for more freeways (and probably more massive demolitions) but that negative citizen reaction became a full-fledged movement that stopped additional travesties.

Post-war economic malaise did, however, help preserve most of historic downtown Los Angeles, as the region's commercial energy was dispersed outward along with new residential growth.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I wonder how urban Jacksonville was compared to Miami at the time. Jax is still Florida's largest city but now it is a city-county sort of system when it was probably just the county seat at the time.

Jacksonville had probably one of the top downtowns for shopping in the United States at one time, with multiple dept. stores and hundreds of smaller stores/restaurants.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

Jacksonville had probably one of the top downtowns for shopping in the United States at one time, with multiple dept. stores and hundreds of smaller stores/restaurants.

no, more like typical. every city of any size had all that before the age of indoor malls.

[shivtim]

Same story, different city. This time Atlanta. Construction of interstates in the 1950s destroys whole neighborhoods.

Before: Southeast Atlanta


Today:

(images from GSU digital collections via ATLurbanist blog)


Slightly further south. Highways, parking lots, and stadiums eat entire neighborhoods and street grids:



1962 construction:


Continuing expansion:



It could have been even worse, but residents revolted and saved several neighborhoods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_freeway_revolts
Plaque commemorating the defeat of the interstate plan:

Currently the charming Virginia Highland neighborhood stands where there could have been an interstate.

[strongbad635]

Originally Posted by shivtim

Same story, different city. This time Atlanta. Construction of interstates in the 1950s destroys whole neighborhoods.

Before: Southeast Atlanta


Today:

(images from GSU digital collections via ATLurbanist blog)


Slightly further south. Highways, parking lots, and stadiums eat entire neighborhoods and street grids:



1962 construction:


Continuing expansion:



It could have been even worse, but residents revolted and saved several neighborhoods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_freeway_revolts
Plaque commemorating the defeat of the interstate plan:

Currently the charming Virginia Highland neighborhood stands where there could have been an interstate.

Holy Toledo! No wonder Atlanta is so wretched today!

[shivtim]

Originally Posted by strongbad635

Holy Toledo! No wonder Atlanta is so wretched today!

It certainly caused a huge amount of Atlanta's problems, but the intown neighborhoods that survived have undergone a renaissance in the past couple of decades (and especially the past few years, with the Beltline and new parks).

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

no, more like typical. every city of any size had all that before the age of indoor malls.

Definitely in Florida and one of the larger ones of the pre-WWII South. In terms of the country? No.

[McBane]

I don't have the graphics but a good portion of Old City in Philadelphia was destroyed to make way for Independence Mall. Basically, they cleared out the slums surrounding Independence Hall. https://goo.gl/maps/fEdXr1Mifo32

It's bad but not too bad.

On the other hand, Ed Bacon's renewal of Society Hill was probably one of the most successful urban renewal projects to come out of that era. It's unbelievable to think that this neighborhood, only 50 years ago, was a slum. Now it's one of the most desirable and historically significant neighborhoods in Philadelphia. This project was ahead of its time for sure. https://goo.gl/maps/wscodhuT4NQ2

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

no, more like typical. every city of any size had all that before the age of indoor malls.

From my understanding it had a lot more than the "typical" downtown.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

From my understanding it had a lot more than the "typical" downtown.

Meh, not really. Not nationally.

The downtowns of Buffalo, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, etc., would have have had about the same mix at the time. Major department store chains were also generally local -- only a small handful of names would have had national recognition, mainly because they were based in primary cities and/or dealt with luxe goods.

It might have been punching above its weight for a population of 200,000 or so. But it wouldn't have been a major outlier.

That said, such downtowns were rarer in the South, so it would have had a bit more "pull" than its Northeastern and Midwestern cousins.

[fflint]

I'm pretty sure Boston was in a different league when it comes to the depth and breadth of downtown shopping in the early- to mid- 20th century than cities like Buffalo, Cincinnati, etc.

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

From my understanding it had a lot more than the "typical" downtown.

For the South it did. Nationally, no.