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Tangentially related, but I am really disappointed in how little actual renewal the "revival" brought about. Except in extremely concentrated urban cores like i
by zanny 9y ago
Tangentially related, but I am really disappointed in how little actual renewal the "revival" brought about. Except in extremely concentrated urban cores like in Manhattan almost every city is still by far dominated by 20s style row houses that stalled out the renewal process (because the yuppies that were moving into cores had no interest in those).
Gentrification and renewal came to blows right in the middle and left what was probably the greatest blemish on the urban unchanged... because those were where the actual poverty was all along in the first place. The urban cores that got "renewed" were never squalor and dilapidation - they might not have been as trendy, but city centers have too much general access to be that useless no matter the popular trends. Unless you have a city like Detroit they just cannot degrade that much.
Which really means all this hype about renewal is really just vapid air. Nobody is putting big money into actually innovating on the city concept, its all about buying politicians for favorable zoning over actually making anything lasting and meaningful out of the interest in urban renewal.
- redwood 9y agoEspecially when garbage chains come in and replace mom n pops. Might as well be back in the suburban strip mall
- freehunter 9y agoIs it possible that the "urban renewal" just didn't hit already-popular and not-in-need-of-renewal cities like Manhattan? My city was almost completely dead as recently as the 90s. Very high crime, lots of abandoned buildings, no businesses in the city center, only poor people lived downtown. Today there is a brewery on every corner, food trucks parked outside every day, live music almost every night of the week, and tons of people who don't own cars making it because downtown is an amazing place to be. And you talk about Detroit: Detroit was one of the biggest benefactors of the urban renewal. Sure it's not back to its pre-1968 glory days, but downtown is a safe and entertaining place to be, plenty of young people hang out, Woodward Ave in particular is hopping pretty much every night of the week. It went from being the place you warned your kids about to being the place you take your kids for a weekend while you watch a baseball game. It's easy to look at Manhattan and say "so much for urban renewal", but look at smaller cities in the Rust Belt. Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St Louis. All cities that just 20 years ago were a death trap if you were there after dark, and certainly not a place you want to live. Now it's hard to tell their downtown cores were ever abandoned in the first place.
- dboreham 9y agoHeck, add San Jose to that list.
- ghaff 9y agoI was at an event at the San Jose Convention Center for the first time in ages fairly recently. San Jose has gained its share of trendy restaurants, etc. But I was surprised the degree to which much of the downtown core is still relatively squalid.
- ghaff 9y agoA lot of the urban renewal I see is very concentrated. I recently was talking about this in a different context. A lot of Northeast port and manufacturing towns have indeed reinvigorated an area with nice condos, restaurants, chichi shops, cafes, etc. But, in many cases, it's an area you can walk across in 5 to 10 minutes and most of the area beyond is still rundown.
- freehunter 9y agoIt's a work in progress, unlike what the article says. In my city, we revitalized downtown, then the east side of town, now they're working on the northwest side of town. As the city becomes more popular, more businesses and people want to move in but now property values are higher and vacant buildings are less common, so you have to move further from the city center. It starts at the center and works its way outward. Rome wasn't rebuilt in a day.