urban renewal and planning disasters

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

The disaster known as the Skyline Project in Denver of the 1960's and 70's. 27 blocks of downtown Denver was torn down with the idea that they would be replaced by shiny new office towers:

Denver Urban Renewal Authority Skyline Project Era

Unfortunately, here we are nearly fifty years later and a lot of of those blocks are still parking lots.

Why didn't they just tear down the buildings one at a time like normal people as the new office towers were ready to be constructed?

[mhays]

Seattle has also torn down hills and filled multiple square miles of tideflat, which are now much of our port/industrial lands and any flat waterfront.

Some of the flat land that was once Denny Hill, just north of the CBD, is underused 85 years later. Basically it's between the older established core of Belltown (much of which was regraded earlier) and the near portions of South Lake Union including Denny Park. First came the Depression, then WWII, then sprawl... Today some of it's our biggest boom district, and some is waiting for projects to move forward, or in some cases deals yet to be made.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Why didn't they just tear down the buildings one at a time like normal people as the new office towers were ready to be constructed?

Because they viewed blight as a spreading cancer. It was to be removed.

[Nouvellecosse]

Wow. Hardcore...

[pizzaguy]

The Fillmore District in SF

[MolsonExport]

The worst such example in Canada is probably the clearances to make way for the wretched Maison Radio Canada complex in Montreal.

The giant parking kiosk that is the CBC-Radio-Canada building was once a thriving neighbourhood of 5000 people called the Faubourg à m’lasse – the molasses neighbourhood, named for the aroma of refining sugar at the giant refinery a few blocks east.It was also the edge of Montreal’s infamous red-light district, which was also destroyed, displacing another 4000 or so.

http://hour.ca/2011/06/23/bloke-nati...eighbourhoods/


taylornoacks

In 1963, the neighborhood was one of the oldest in the city when it was razed in order to construct the Maison Radio-Canada. The destruction of whole neighborhoods was not a rare occurrence in Montreal during the 1950s and 1960s. Montreal, during this time period, was on the mend. It was facing a serious decline in its economy after the Second World War and due to various phases of de-industrialization. In the nineteenth century, Montreal was the "uncontested metropolis of Canada" as it was one of North America's main industrial cities and financial centres.[3] Montreal's reputation started to decline as soon as the 1890s and this had an impact on the city's urban makeup.[4] Over the next six decades, Montreal's downtown would move further and further away from the water and whole parts of the old city were deemed "obsolete and unrecoverable."[5] To add to all this, by the late 1950s, Montreal's port was no longer Canada's maritime terminal. Trucking was becoming the more popular medium for shipping goods and Ontario was at the head of automobile production. Since shipping by boat and train was becoming less in demand, Montreal's economy suffered, as they were one of the leaders in manufacturing railway equipment. American and International investment firms began to favor Toronto, which soon replaced Montreal as Canada's financial capital.

wookipeida

site clearing:

Ville de Montreal archives

what used to be there:

mtlurb

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Fortunately, Birmingham's downtown died before all the "renewal" occurred in the US. The only true loss we had was our train station:


Courtesy of the Bham Public Library


Source


Source

Here's what replaced it....


Source


Source


The part where the train station existed is off in the distance just about before where you see the roadway start to split into multiple ramps and overpasses.

[IMBY]

That ultra-modern, $2 billion dollar, Albany complex was Nelson Rockefeller's idea as he was labeled a Master Builder, he was also instrumental in bringing the World Trade Center towers to NYC, or so I read.

Nelson wasn't happier unless he was seeing something built, like 17 universities built in NY during his 15-year reign.

He was the biggest spending Republican Governor the country has ever seen?

And as NY was faltering, economically, and NYC facing bankruptcy, in that period, he wanted to keep on building, and he raised the minimum wage to the highest in the country, only worsening the situation.

His successor, a Democrat, had to install painful austerity measures in NY to rectify the excesses of Nelson Rockefeller.

[IMBY]

Originally Posted by MplsTodd

Minneapolis had the Gateway District, an Urban Renewal project that resulted in a complete destruction of approximately 12-14 square blocks in the original 1880s-1890s part of downtown Minneapolis (before downtown's heart gravitated southward towards 5th-8th streets. By the late 1950s, this area was skid row and had scores of worn out buildings. But the scorched earth demolition resulted in the loss of several architectural treasures, including the Metropolitan Building, an elegant 1890s landmark that was considered the first "skyscraper" in the city (at 12 stories). It was torn down in 1961 and was a parking lot for 20 years and then the site was developed with a generic 8-story Class B building.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...FQjEYwodKTYF2Q

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...FQjEYwodKTYF2Q

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...FQjEYwodKTYF2Q

https://www.minnpost.com/business/20...-gateway-scars

http://lileks.com/mpls/gateway/

For someone who lived in Minneapolis from 1972-1993, thanks for the uploads.

How many times did I wish I had moved there before the demolition in that area, how much more interesting and exciting that area would have been, talking to those that lived there during that time.

I also wonder what was in the area of where I had my condo/loft in Eliot Park, near the Metrodome, surrounded by a sea of parking lots. What was there before?

At least they built one building in that Gateway area that will survive WWIII. I had a massage client that lived in The Towers, who had bought 2 corner 2 bedroom condo's, and combined them at the end of the hall, to give views of the downtown skyline and the Mississippi River.

With all his money, why did he choose to buy there?

"They'll never build a building like this again (circa 1960) ever! 12 inches of concrete between the floors, and poured concrete walls between the units!"

Let's see a terrorist bomb try to take that building down!

[ColDayMan]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

Granted, Fort Washington Way replaced a lot of nondescript buildings in an area prone to flooding, but the end result was the sequestration of the riverfront from the rest of Downtown Cincinnati. Eventually, the city built a crappy cookie cutter multipurpose stadium and an even shittier arena, and then eventually two stadiums that suck all they can from the taxpayers of Hamilton County for the pleasure of hosting awful football and terrible baseball teams.

Granted, far before Fort Washington Way, that warehouse district along the river used to have some nice older buildings similar to the Old City neighborhood in Philadelphia + the eastern terminus of the western suburban rail before Union Terminal was completed.


http://www.urbanohio.com/

[Kenneth]

The worst project ever in Detroit was the Interstate project that decimated thousands of communities. All the billions used for this undesirable project could have went towards strenghtening the communities.

[Kenneth]

Originally Posted by tascalisa

Fortunately, Birmingham's downtown died before all the "renewal" occurred in the US. The only true loss we had was our train station:


Courtesy of the Bham Public Library

Source


Source

Here's what replaced it....


Source


Source


The part where the train station existed is off in the distance just about before where you see the roadway start to split into multiple ramps and overpasses.

Birmingham probably didn't have much to destroy, and I mean that in a good way. And back in the 40's through 60's, cities in the south were not large enough to have large areas destroyed anyway, so only small buildings were pinpointed.

[MolsonExport]

Turning Downtown into Suburbia – The Case of Hartford, Connecticut

When we think of sprawl, we usually picture suburban life. But inner cities also took on the character of sprawl when freeways came in and were buildings torn down

This is how to do "urban renewal" (Cheonggye stream, Seoul)

cossdotblog

[MolsonExport]

the ruined city of Niagara Falls, NY (believe it or not this is a tourist promotion photograph):

usaniagara

In the 1970s virtually every downtown building was demolished for an ambitious urban renewal programme. Only the United Office Building and The Niagara hotel survive.

http://citynoise.org/article/11028

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Kenneth

Birmingham probably didn't have much to destroy, and I mean that in a good way. And back in the 40's through 60's, cities in the south were not large enough to have large areas destroyed anyway, so only small buildings were pinpointed.

Tell that to Charlotte.

Charlotte 1948:



Charlotte 1975:


Source.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

Tell that to Charlotte.

Charlotte 1948:



Charlotte 1975:


Source.

Omg...


Well not to mention what happened to Houston

Then...




A few years ago...

[Ant131531]

Lol, Charlotte barely looked like a city anymore.

And people love that Houston photo.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Lol, Charlotte barely looked like a city anymore.

And people love that Houston photo.

Well each example personifies the anti-urban mentality of the South.

Anyway, some of what is shown in this thread is so depressing. What were architects thinking 1950s- 1970s?!

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Well each example personifies the anti-urban mentality of the South.

I wouldn't go that far, not when the South also features some of the nation's best urbanity in New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Memphis, Richmond, Norfolk (where a downtown mall revitalized downtown), Miami Beach, and other communities.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

airstrike of the north st. louis warehouse district by the 1957 us airforce.

LOL!

That's both funny and very sad, though.