Examples of Global Interwar, Post-war, Mid-late 20th Century Urban Development

[jd3189]

Thought about making this thread since we all very much know that the main type of development in the Western world (especially in the US) since World War II was suburban sprawl dedicated ultimately for the car.


However, people in other parts of the world did not cease living in cities in the 20th century. Beyond the modern and post modern skyscrapers that were going up in Chicago, NYC, etc, there was also some urban developments in places that never experienced widespread urban decay. A lot of these places had interesting architecture that made them feel more "modern" than other places.


For example, Tel Aviv in Israel, which was mostly built in the last century:


http://www.mimamuseum.eu/events/film...tel-aviv-live/



And Tokyo, Japan



https://wow-j.com/en/Allguides/tokyo/shopping/00294_en/



I will post stuff more in depth, but stuff like that essentially. There are probably some US versions of this, but the world was still making urban environments while ours were dying.

[Pedestrian]

Much of San Francisco's traditional Financial District was built in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the turn of the 21st century, development has moved south to the other side of Market St. (where, for example, the supertall Salesforce Tower is located). But here is the traditional FiDi:








Images: https://www.google.com/search?q=SF+f...6e_KPXGv5k30M:

[jd3189]

^^^ I guess in terms of the skyscrapers, downtown SF fits the bill. But I was more interested in residential neighborhood and smaller developments like in the Sunset District or Richmond.


Stuff like this:


https://www.apartmenthomeliving.com/...or-rent/studio




http://www.publicbooks.org/living-ed...san-francisco/




https://www.airbnb.com/locations/san...o/inner-sunset



Anything anywhere in the world from the 1920/ 30s to the 1990s is fair game. Especially between 1940s-1980s since that was the peak era of the suburbs in the US.

[Pedestrian]

^^The Sunset isn't all 2-floor buildings. Parkmerced's

apartment towers were designed by Leonard Schultze and Associates, the post-War successor firm to Schultze and Weaver, in partnership with prominent landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church. The development was built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, after their success with the Parkchester development in New York City. Development started in the 1939, but was slowed due to World War II. The first tenants moved into the Font Boulevard buildings in early 1944. The development was completed in the early 1950s and was a first home to many military families returning from the Second World War and the Korean War. Metropolitan Life has built similar apartment blocks in other large cities, including Park La Brea in Los Angeles, Parkfairfax in Virginia, and Riverton Houses, Parkchester, and Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan to name a few. Parkmerced’s unusual pie-shaped blocks were designed by its architect, Leonard Schultze, and shares many features with his Park La Brea design. Schultze worked closely with landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church, who often collaborated with cutting-edge, Modern architects, to refine the plan for Parkmerced . . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkmerced,_San_Francisco

[pizzaguy]

Parkmerced is not in the Sunset.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by pizzaguy

Parkmerced is not in the Sunset.

San Franciscans can argue about neighborhood boundaries until the cows come home and it's boring. Parkmerced is south of the Park, between the park and the city limit. As far as I'm concerned, that puts it in the greater Sunset but I know you won't agree and so what? It's a classic example of a type of 40's/50s apartment blocks.

[JManc]

"Ocean Beach"

How generic of a name can you get?

[jd3189]

LA has great examples of these detached apartment districts that are decently walkable despite appealing to cars. Not sure if these are streetcar suburbs, but they were probably built in the interwar period.


Squares and Triangles by Eric Beteille, on Flickr


Sanford/Koreatown by Ian Freimuth, on Flickr



Wilshire and Bixel Street by jericl cat, on Flickr

Probably the best type of dense development that can make a good comeback in this time and be applicable for Sunbelt cities since the old attached development is not supported by zoning and is pretty unsafe these days.

[mhays]

I'm impressed with LA's large amounts of lowrise density. But it can be done better....Seven stories is better than three. And the parking can be dramatically reduced. LA is doing more of the first and apparently not much of the second...parking requirements are massive.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'm impressed with LA's large amounts of lowrise density. But it can be done better....Seven stories is better than three. And the parking can be dramatically reduced. LA is doing more of the first and apparently not much of the second...parking requirements are massive.

LA is massive and the car culture there is alive and well.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'm impressed with LA's large amounts of lowrise density. But it can be done better....Seven stories is better than three. And the parking can be dramatically reduced. LA is doing more of the first and apparently not much of the second...parking requirements are massive.

IMHO LA has done a great job upzoning the old streetcar suburban areas to allow for lowrise apartment density. However, up until very recently, it kept the use-based zoning straitjackets in place, which is why you ended up with neighborhoods where the back streets were densely packed with apartments (with no ground-floor retail) while the main arteries had these piddly one-story storefronts with the occasional small strip mall. You couldn't even build "apartments over the shop" in these areas at all. Thus you had the curious outcome where what you would presume would be the most desirable land had the least intensive development - pretty much the opposite of most cities, where the higher-density development is limited to the commercial corridors, and the back streets remain SFH-land.

[Crawford]

Latin America, which had insane birthrates and massive urbanization in the postwar decades, would probably be the best candidate in this hemisphere.

For example, Mexico City went from roughly 3 million people in 1970 to 20 million by 1980, which is the largest decennial growth of any metro in world history. It hasn't grown much since then.

Not surprisingly, much of Mexico City has a 1970's look today.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'm impressed with LA's large amounts of lowrise density. But it can be done better....Seven stories is better than three. And the parking can be dramatically reduced. LA is doing more of the first and apparently not much of the second...parking requirements are massive.

LA's newest urban inflll is mostly in the 5-7 story range now, with ground floor commerical space. There aren't many complexes u/c or planned with 2-3 stories anymore.
Even in LA's more suburban areas there's larger buildings going up.

[mhays]

That's what I mean...better density but still sunbelt-type car storage.

Crawford, Mexico city didn't grow like that. You're looking at apples vs. oranges.

[Muji]

I'm not an expert on the topic, but relative to North American cities, central Johannesburg has a noticeably larger portion of downtown buildings constructed between the 1930s-1970s (when US downtowns saw relatively little concentrated development), making it a small treasure trove of mid-rise and high-rise Modernist architecture.

[mhays]

True, it looks ugly. I'd like to visit though.

[memph]

This describes most of urban Montreal. Montreal has a lot of neighbourhoods from this time period that range from 100% fully urban like Little Italy, to "kind of auto-oriented and ugly but still noticeably more urban than typical American post-WWII development" which applies to a lot of the 60s-70s post-WWII development of Montreal.

Ex a rare example of high density post-WWII industrial development in North America - the Rue Chabanel fashion industry factories/warehouses, which were built in the 60s-80s.

Fairly typical late 60s to 70s development from Saint Leonard

Much of the commercial development in Saint Leonard and Lasalle is shopping malls, but you do have a bit that's more urban.

Street fronting cafes on Rue Jarry E
https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.58218...7i13312!8i6656
This stretch of Jean Talon developed mainly in the 1960s.


Triplex, early 1950s?


Interwar development was largely indistinguishable from 1880-1915 development, these are from the interwar suburb of Verdun.


Little Italy ie the area around Jean Talon market, development began in interwar years but a lot of additional development took place in the mid 20th century.


Cote des Neiges where my grandparents live is similar in age, at least around the historic core.

Cote des Neiges also has many blocks of larger mid-century apartment buildings rather than the 2-8 unit buildings that make up much of Montreal's urban fabric.


Outremont is a more middle class interwar suburb compared to Verdun.


Very typical interwar development, still significantly denser than development in similar sized American cities from that time such as St Louis or Cleveland.


Villeray is another neighbourhood with a mix of interwar and mid-century development.


Parc-Extension, the highest density neighbourhood in Montreal (55,000/sq mi) was largely undeveloped pre-WWII, I think there were mostly just a few bungalows. The mixed use "main street" type buildings and 3-4 storey walk-up apartments were built mainly in the 40s-60s, in some cases on vacant lots, other times redeveloping the original SFHs.


East end (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve) development, probably interwar.

vs 1950s development from the same area


Walk-ups, probably from early 1950s.

[jd3189]

^^^ Lots of good examples from Montreal. A lot of them reminds me of NYC when I was living there as a kid. Not Manhattan of course, but the parts of Brooklyn and Queens closest to the Atlantic along with much of the Bronx was built in the interwar and post-war periods.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Muji

I'm not an expert on the topic, but relative to North American cities, central Johannesburg has a noticeably larger portion of downtown buildings constructed between the 1930s-1970s (when US downtowns saw relatively little concentrated development), making it a small treasure trove of mid-rise and high-rise Modernist architecture.

Yeah a huge percentage of the downtown core and surrounding high density neighbourhood were built between the late 1920s and 1970s. There's a few substantial older buildings but since the city is relatively new (went from ~20,000 in 1890 to over 100k by 1896) a large part of the downtown core would have been single family homes / terraces and ended up redeveloped. This culminated in the construction of the tallest towers in the 1970s (Carlton Centre 1973, Ponte Tower 1975) before decay began to set in during the 1980s.

Unlike American decay this resulted in overcrowding and hijacked buildings, not abandonment. Although some of the large office buildings were shuttered. There's been a ton of renewal in the past few years with residential buildings rehabbed and office buildings reoccupied.

You can see examples in the photothreads I've posted but the streetview is up to date as well.

Primarily 1930s-60s streetscapes in the CBD - most of the apartment blocks in this area are in pretty good shape inside still:
https://goo.gl/maps/EZinLiYiNcJ2
https://goo.gl/maps/pjRzC4Hp7HM2
https://goo.gl/maps/krcjkhiKG3G2
https://goo.gl/maps/JsRA2afqKcE2
https://goo.gl/maps/Svod2khyLm62

There's also some great examples of art deco with Anstey's building (right) and Manners Mansion (left), both designed by the same architect and remain fairly high end:
https://goo.gl/maps/icQmqpcqwDR2


Residential areas in Hillbrow and Berea (some still in rough shape):
https://goo.gl/maps/B2HCZnkozU92
https://goo.gl/maps/UMxtAZyfkqp
https://goo.gl/maps/4EUztGrMvNr
https://goo.gl/maps/bZ96zBV7vZT2
https://goo.gl/maps/ewYLiozvFkw

More middle class and student examples in Braamfontein:
https://goo.gl/maps/UGr9rGyasjL2
https://goo.gl/maps/5H2QgdRXtX92
https://goo.gl/maps/mzEaxzDadzB2


The suburbs aren't very walkable on the whole but there are some examples of street fronting commercial strips that were generally built up postwar, even if the surrounding houses are somewhat older.

Parkhurst: https://goo.gl/maps/ETXgPZ2ZCpA2
Greenside: https://goo.gl/maps/cnWc5QD5wpN2
Norwood: https://goo.gl/maps/STnWPGfzMG22
Emmerantia: https://goo.gl/maps/uKdDe5gY74C2
Illovo: https://goo.gl/maps/fy5mqFTnmjT2
Linden: https://goo.gl/maps/QuBtSd4KM9s