urban renewal and planning disasters

[LSyd]

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.

you really don't know what you're talking about

and then sadly that decades old aerial of Houston pops up to signify the thread's jumped the shark. bleh.

-

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Charleston and Savannah have a hell of a lot more than a few blocks of amazing urbanism, not at all comparable to the extent of New Orleans, but still, each one has about 100 blocks or more of good intact urbanism. In the case of Savannah, it has about 3-4 miles both ways of historically intact urbanism and historic neighborhoods.

Savannah I've just passed through, but I highly doubt it. The most famous part of Savannah (the neighborhoods around the squares) aren't really higher density except for a few commercial blocks.

Charleston, which seemed, if anything, bigger than Savannah, and where I spent a long weekend, has maybe a square mile of somewhat dense, prewar urbanism, if that. The city isn't more urban than comparably sized older cities around the country; it's just nicer. It's very small, but very high quality. It's a small city. Outside that corridor, you have some older, leafy neighborhoods, and then, to the north, basically nothing, a former slum area now mostly empty, and then suburbs.

[Matthew]

I was reading the post from Lakelander and I remembered: Just a few years ago, Winston-Salem had a "recent" urban renewal project that demolished an historic African-American neighborhood to build a new downtown ballpark and a lifestyle center. Yes, you read that correctly. A lifestyle center in downtown.

Winston-Salem's Brookstown District:
This development demolished an entire neighborhood. Yes, a church from 1910, retail buildings from the 1890s, and homes built between 1890-1920. I think the neighborhood was demolished in 2008? There was a request to preserve a shotgun house or maybe two, since Winston-Salem has so few examples. However, an illegal demolition (with no permits) destroyed the shotgun houses before the developer could be required to preserve them. The recession slowed this project down and even delayed the ballpark's opening. The plan was to build the best and most expensive ballpark in minor league baseball and there was talk of how big and tall it would be. It was scaled-back, but 360 Architecture found a way to give it a "Major League" appearance with a proper minor league size. The ballpark opened in 2010 and won a Ballpark of the Year award and a Brick in Architecture award. Team owners (2 owners at the time of construction) expected fans to walk or ride bikes to the new ballpark from the existing neighboring homes, condos and apartments; so it was built with significantly less parking than you would expect to see. Winston-Salem doesn't have parking requirements in downtown. When the ballpark opened, team owners found around 70% or more of their fans live outside Forsyth County and had to park far from the ballpark and take a shuttle. Making things more interesting, the team owner is working with different developers to replace the few parking locations around the ballpark with buildings. Construction on the first 200 apartments, which replaced a temporary ballpark parking location that was once a triangle of houses from 1890-1920, began in 2013. In 2015, an Atlanta developer stepped-up to build the lifestyle center. Brand Properties will construct nearly 600 luxury apartments, 300,000 square feet of retail, a downtown grocery store, 300,000 square feet of office space, and two hotels in two or three phases, beginning in early 2016, with completion set for 2018. Tenants have already preleased it. A possible future expansion is also being planned for 2018 that will built-out the entire site with buildings by 2020 and could bring the retail to 500,000 square feet? The same architects who designed Alpharetta's (suburban Atlanta) upscale Avalon lifestyle center and are currently working on the Atlanta Braves' "The Battery" mixed-use development are also working on this project. When fully built-out, in 2020, this could become Winston-Salem's second largest shopping destination, behind only Hanes Mall. ...and it's downtown!

Before (2007):

Credit: Google Streetview

The geographic depression created the perfect location for a ballpark, which critics said appears sculpted out of the landscape. Workers actually had to take dirt from the tall hills on the site and fill the depression with it, because it was too deep for the ballpark. The terrain is the reason this ballpark has the steepest seating pitch in baseball, which provides great views!

After (September 2015):

Credit: Google Streetview

Location of the proposed Lifestyle Center:

Credit: Google Streetview

Lifestyle Center - to begin construction in early 2016: (Say goodbye to the ballpark's beautiful skyline view!)

Credit

The homes in the 2007 image are where the grocery store is located in the renderings.


Credit

Even after heavy grading, the site still has extremely rough terrain, which is seen in the renderings.


Credit

Historic Marker: (It says: The neighborhood formerly located on the site of the baseball stadium...)

Credit

[Shawn]

Boston before the West End and Scollay Square were cleared for the Charles River Park towers and Government Center was built.
source


Scollay Square
source

[osmo]

Jacksonville looks like one of the worst in regards to destroying something good. It has one of the better tight old style grids, very small and easy to navigate blocks in a tight pattern up against the water. In modern days it is sliced up by massive freeways and garish stadiums. A perfect grid ruined by parking lots on almost evrey block, skywalks, oddly distributed towers, and parkcades that all kill any real attempt to get some life on the street.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Boston before the West End and Scollay Square were cleared for the Charles River Park towers and Government Center was built.

Would Government Center include that city hall building whose design was apparently chosen out of sheer hatred of the city and people of Boston?

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

Would Government Center include that city hall building whose design was apparently chosen out of sheer hatred of the city and people of Boston?

One and the same!

[Matthew]

Government Districts seem to have taken a lot of great buildings.

Winston-Salem's Government District:
This is likely the easiest to find photographs of. This is the area where the U.S. Federal Courthouse, Forsyth Hall of Justice, Forsyth Government Center, City Hall, Stuart Municipal Building, former Sheriff's Department, Forsyth Detention Center Towers 1 & 2, a hotel, several concrete 1970s hardscape plazas, and maybe four parking decks are located. It's close to being fully developed. Two more sites could fill-in soon, with a new 12-storey Forsyth County Courthouse and a science museum.

This is really bad. Just image what the southern part of downtown would be like today, if these buildings were still standing. These connected Old Salem to today's Restaurant Row. This area likely would've been hotels, apartments/condos, restaurants, art galleries, and tech offices. This is where the 1893 Wachovia Bank Headquarters was located!

Before:

Nothing in this photograph is still standing:

Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library

Nothing in this photograph is still standing:

Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Unknown (saved years ago)


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Unknown


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library

The 2nd Wachovia Headquarters (1893)

Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library

Watch the Demolition:
In 1971, the Government District project moved forward.


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library

What Did They Build:


Credit: Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Library

This could've been much worse. 8 W. Third Street (Wachovia Bank's first skyscraper), which is North Carolina's oldest steel frame skyscraper, was also scheduled to be demolished for this. It was even boarded-up! Somehow, it survived and was renovated back into an office building in 1983. It's mostly government offices today, with a restaurant and coffee shop.

When several blocks are demolished; the time to rebuild is usually measured in decades.

[RCDC]

Google Earth historic aerial imagery is great for showing before/after on a larger scale, for example SW DC. All the urban-renewal bullet points are evident.



I don't necessarily lament the loss of the buildings in of itself, but obviously the loss of the street and alley grid is all too evident as is the largely auto-focused development. However this is much better than if it just turned into a sea of surface parking lots, and in fact is continuing to be developed and infilled. The problems with urban renewal in so many cities was that it was predicated on revitalization plans that didn't happen. So the demolition happened, they got their highways but little to nothing else.

[The North One]

edit

[MolsonExport]

Jacksonville ranks up there as one of the biggest urban renewal disasters in world history.

[Crawford]

What major American city did the least damage to its core? Maybe San Francisco? I know they had major urban renewal in the Western Addition area, but the outcome wasn't that horrible, and there doesn't appear to be too much freeway or Corbusian housing clear-cutting during that era.

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).

[MolsonExport]

San Fran and NYC probably got off the lightst

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Jacksonville ranks up there as one of the biggest urban renewal disasters in world history.

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

[Cro Burnham]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

San Fran and NYC probably got off the lightst

The Loop got off OK too, right?

[Crawford]

NYC had tons of urban renewal. It might not be as noticeable, because the city is so much more urban than others, and because the urban renewal projects tended to be denser/more urban, but huge swaths of the city were demolished. Robert Moses was pretty much king of U.S. urban renewal.

In Manhattan alone, half of the Lower East Side and Tribeca, most of East Harlem, maybe a third of the Upper West Side and Central Harlem and Central Village, were demolished. Often the replacement was not that horrible, but the bulldozers were very active in NYC.

[Reverberation]

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.

That stuff drives me crazy. They didn't need to do that. Developers are perfectly capable of hiring a demolition contractor if they decide to redevelop a site.

[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.

[King Kill 'em]

Los Angeles I'd say got off somewhat easily. The freeways obviously destroyed a lot but mostly just single family homes I think. 220,000 were displaced by that. Then in downtown there was bunker hill which had once been a rich victorian neighborhood with victorian mansions in the 1890s or so. With the expansion of roads and car availability, many of those rich people moved to places like Pasadena and the area became rundown begining in about the 30s. The neighborhood was redeveloped starting in the 50s and all the houses were torn town over an eight year period ending in 1967 I think. It was about 24 blocks I think that were redeveloped. It's taken them decades to build it all out and we still have 2 vacant blocks. There's some pros and cons to what was built. Some all right and nice looking skyscrapers were built giving us part of our modern skyline but much of it was built as car centric. It's obvious they tried to make Grand Avenue pedestrian friendly (and they still are, but the problem they didn't build enough residential. There's more problems and I could go on and on but it's hard to describe. I'd also say we're lucky in LA because they didn't destroy many of our pre war office highrises on Broadway, Spring, Main, and Hill streets.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

NYC had tons of urban renewal. It might not be as noticeable, because the city is so much more urban than others, and because the urban renewal projects tended to be denser/more urban, but huge swaths of the city were demolished. Robert Moses was pretty much king of U.S. urban renewal.

In Manhattan alone, half of the Lower East Side and Tribeca, most of East Harlem, maybe a third of the Upper West Side and Central Harlem and Central Village, were demolished. Often the replacement was not that horrible, but the bulldozers were very active in NYC.

In terms of core areas, NYC is still one of the least worst of big mid-century cities. So I would still agree that NYC and SF probably did the least damage. Boston and D.C. would probably also be in my top 5.