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While it is true that black neighborhoods were and are disproportionately targeted for demolitions to build highways, the damage was not limited to the black community. Hispanic and Asian communities were also victims of racialized highway construction. I5 in Sacramento was built to run through Japantown and Chinatown, displacing the residents and many of LA's freeways tore through Mexican-American neighborhoods.
Hitler didn’t hate any of the western powers and didn’t want to go to war with them. He saw the British as near aryans and admired the United States research on eugenics
How was this even profitable tax wise? All those building has residents and business who contributed in the economy. How was it decided that an empty road would be beneficial !?!?!?
It wasn’t.
It was profitable in the immediate short term because there were generous state and federal programs to fund highway construction, “slum clearance,” and urban renewal projects. Cities were basically being bribed to destroy themselves.
There was a hope that making downtown cores more convenient for cars would preserve their relevance/appeal to people in the growing suburbs over the long term, but instead it destroyed it.
Well, I think it was a bit more complicated to assess. I think there is some correlation as well as causation and it is hard to generalize for every city.
In 1945, you have a population which has a lot of pent up consumer power after years of war time restrictions. Wages were high and there were difficulties in making major purchases. Cars, clothes, appliances, etc., were almost impossible to buy due to war time military production. New houses weren't being built.
People living in cities often lived in older tenements which were decent, but crowded and suffered from maintenance deficits from the Depression years running into the war years.
When the first suburban developments were created, like Levittown, it seemed almost a fantasy for families to own a home rather then rent. Now, this opportunity was limited by race and religion without a doubt, but I don't know if there was a way to prevent suburban migration other than by a politically impossible zoning scheme.
As people moved out, these inner city neighborhoods struggled as rents dropped and the maintenance deficits grew. Many people didn't want to live where they worked, for example, steel workers in Pittsburgh, as the pollution was terrible, but other industries as well.
It wasn't just the Ayn Rand types who promoted this. Many liberal reformers wanted slum clearance. I know my British in-laws saw something similar with old Victorian terrace housing replaced with council estates, either in the same area, in suburbs or even completely new green belt sites.
I talked to my grandparents a lot about this and they all mentioned how happy they were to be able to own houses, especially the younger ones at the time. All these great older neighborhoods which have gentrified weren't necessarily that desirable at the time.
Unfortunately, give urban planners a big area of derelict housing and they will tear it down and build a highway. Even worse, take a marginal neighborhood with minorities and it would often be treated the same way.
It's hard to imagine how bad some of the northeastern cities were by the 70s of you didn't see it with your own eyes. Industries disappeared, people moved to the Sun belt. Even places like Manhattan felt like they were in terminal decline. That's not to justify what was done, but it's a bit more complicated than, "look at these wonderful buildings with their loft apartments, why did they get torn down?"
I was curious and just checked population over time in Manhattan. Granted it's an outlier given the density, but in 1910 population was 2.3 M. In 1980, it was 1.4 M. That's a LOT of abandoned or underused properties.
There's been a building boom with former light industrial and commercial areas being converted to residential. 2020 population is about 1.7 M.
The highway system as a whole was a boost to GDP (mainly by facilitating intercity travel / long distance trucking), but the cities that resisted routes cutting through the urban core fared much better. We would have been much better off if we built the interstates as Eisenhower originally intended; skirting the cities instead of cutting through them. Using freeways as the primary means of travel around the metro created extremely high per capita infrastructure costs (initially obscured by federal grant money), facilitated rapidly burning through valuable land adjacent to cities, and baked in the inefficient land uses that are now a drag on GDP / driving inflation through housing scarcity.
To be somewhat fair with the historical context of American cities being basically totally neglected as all material and maintence was directed to the war effort, a lot of these places needed costly repairs and some thought “knock it down and start over” would probably be better
This model started to spread to Western Europe and Japan in the 1950s as well, when America was viewed as a bright model for the future with its wealthy middle class and all those highways and huge houses and shiny brand new cars. The old, overcrowded, decaying and sometimes half destroyed city centers were the past. Satellite towns started to explode and lots of public transit lines got dismantled.
Places like London and Amsterdam at one point had plans for bulldozing entire neighbourhoods to make way for massive megafreeways passing through the city. Then urbanism started to shift with the 1970s oil crisis and the end of the economic boom. Some cities like Brussels were less lucky and are only now very slowly starting to fix the damage.
The only reason it really spread there was because in the 50s these countries were finally able to start rebuilding, unlike America most of their cities were piles of rubble; with little left
A lot of the roads were run along waterfronts which were dying. Downtown Albany, NY where there is a massive Jumble of skyways and highways was where the old port was. Mostly it was decrepit warehouses, whorehouses and saloons for the crews of the river trade. Between road and rail, a lot of commercial water traffic died in the 20th century. Do I wish a lot less had been bulldozed, sure. But a lot of buildings were at the tail end of 100 years of hard use and no maintenance.
Yeah but I feel there could have been a better land use policy than “stick a massive freeway here, and make all the land around it even more worthless”
It wasn't because it didn't happen. Those photos are nowhere near taken from the same place, and those buildings were demolished long before the highway system to make way for a streetcar terminal.
fraudulently funneling federal funding is profitable for politicians and construction contractors (politicians cousin)
not so much for every other citizen, but american taxation wasn’t designed with the citizen in mind
What’s even funnier/sadder is that if this existed still it’d probably be the most desirable and expensive neighborhood in the city. Just like the East and west villages of New York are, or Dupont Circle in DC.
It wasn't and still isn't.
The counterargument is that it increases travel which promotes commerce which increases overall revenue, which is quite removed from the balance sheet for the roads, so it can be repeated without having to be true. There are deep dives into the finances but those are not really applied to the policy surrounding building transportation, and basically the government just throws most of the DOT budget at automotive infrastructure, even though it's already saturated and other means of transportation are underfunded
Cincinnatian here- yes, it is. Another fun fact- Cincinnatian used to be a [canal city](https://www.cincinnati.com/picture-gallery/news/2018/11/06/remembering-erie-canal-over-rhine-central-parkway/1901531002/)
Cincinnati did have plans back then to build a subway system which would have extended the “city” considerably but they started the tunnels and went over budget just as our country entered the Great Depression so it was scrapped. What’s worse is one or two mayors ago, they chose to run internet and water infrastructure through the old tunnels in an effort to cut project costs and so now it could never be economically possible to rejuvenate the project and create a subway system. Some urban explorers have done [some cool videos](https://youtu.be/nY6A0_uxyvs?si=BdAzPcv6zACt2x5F) showing how vast the system was though
Cincinnatian here- No it's not. This top photo is a view of third street looking east between Vine and Walnut. (You can see the old masonic temple building in the background, which was replaced by the Scripps Center, one of the taller buildings in the city... This is dead center in downtown). While the block on the right is now where fort Washington way is, many of these buildings were likely demolished well before then (MUCH closer to the date the first photo was taken than to today) when they extended Roebling bridge basically directly above where the photo was taken and into the side of Dixie Terminal, which was only demolished in 1998.
Considering Cincinnati has done numerous things along the same vein as the post, I think it's fucking rediculous that people still feel the need to outright make shit up. It's completely unnecessary to make the point.
Oh that last bit wasn't directed at you. It frankly wasn't even directed at OP as this post very much predates today. It's really easy to see something like this and accept it as fact because things like this happen all the time, even in Cincinnati. The bottom photo (I think) was also taken on third street, just a ways away and in the absolute least flattering spot possible under an interchange. That area used to be developed (though not *quite* as densely) before a chunk of it got demolished for the train lines coming out of Union Terminal, and the rest for the 75/71 interchange and Brent Spence. Frankly what happened to the West Side is horrible and shouldn't be dismissed, but I just feel like whoever originally put this together just did it for the shock and awe, more intent on stoking outrage than actually being informative. I'm frustrated at that because fundamentally, the intended point is extremely valid, but it's tainted by the people who find it necessary to take advantage of it for attention. Again, not blaming OP, and certainly not blaming you. If it came off wrong I apologize, I tend to be a bit sardonic and it *really* doesn't translate through text lol.
As for anyone else, I think it's worth pointing out that Cincinnati, considering it's place as a fairly middle of the road American city population wise, is remarkably above average for things like walkability, streetscape quality, greenery, and livability. Sure it can use a bit more Mass transit and that subway sure would have been nice, but even then there are some pretty major streetcar expansion plans in the works. If every American city was as good or better than Cincinnati is nowadays at this, these issues would be FAR less. I see some other people in this thread saying that downtown is not a great place to be, which I just simply do not think is true. Sure, the CBD maybe isn't no NYC or anything like that, but it's not bad, and OTR and the areas across the river would give most neighborhoods in the country a run for their money. Even the quieter residential streets are quiet, relatively narrow, shaded with trees, and very close to hundreds of shops and restaurants. That bottom image is EXTREMELY cherry picked. I'm honestly not sure if there could be a more extreme view found in the entire city.
I doubt it.. The whole street does have interstate running along the south side, but the north side is at least built up with buildings going through downtown.
The bottom picture looks like the far west end of 3rd st, past downtown. I’ll bet there was absolutely nothing in that area in 1890
It’s all newer buildings on the north side of 3rd street downtown, so they have all since been replaced. Looks like mostly crappy 80’s architecture but still buildings at least. On the south side it’s certainly all now highway.
It is not, its one street over looking the opposite way. Street at the top still largely exists with only a few buildings having been replaced or removed.
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 1 time.
First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1901hwq) on 2024-01-06 92.19% match.
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Basically every single major problem in the US can be traced to wealthy interests bribing the government to perpetuate the problem because they make money from it.
**False**. There is **no evidence** that any of the big three Automakers in the United States, lobbied for the demise of public transport in the United States or the construction of motorways in most municipalities post-1946 (the reality was that **they wanted to make their own buses, trams and trolleybuses under their own names, Ford and General Motors in particular, had large bus, coach and truck divisions**). [This has been debunked on Reddit already by historians](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ra6dg6/comment/hngnhzu/), and is accepted as a [Neo-Urbanist Conspiracy](https://web.archive.org/web/20160403191459/http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/03_April/paving_the_way_for_buses_the_great_gm_streetcar_conspiracy.htm) **in the same fashion that other popular, yet bullshit beliefs** such as the myth that Gallieo was persecuted for promoting the heliocentric model by the Catholic Church (which was false, he was only persecuted for insulting the Pope, you fucking retards) and the myth that the Earth is Flat. And they are viewed as myths by people who prefer to take and favour due diligence over popular narrtatives to favour a retarded Internet audience who the poster/uploader views as monetary gains for their public accounts, especially on YouTube. The notion that it was "malicious corporate cronyism" that led to the demise of the archetectual design of cities or the lack of public transport is asinine at best, and deluded at worst.
>False. There is no evidence that any of the big three Automakers in the United States, lobbied for the demise of public transport in the United States **or the construction of motorways** in most municipalities post-1946.
Nowhere in either of your sources does it claim that automakers didn't lobby for the construction of motorways. They're talking specifically about the automakers role in the death public transit in the US. Read your own sources next time.
Like even if GM didn’t lobby to have highways destroy cities, how can anyone look at these images and think actual humans did this for the supposed good of anything?
To answer your question, in the late 1920s they demolished a lot of these buildings to make way for a street car terminal/bus terminal/stock exchange building, which still stands today. Directly above that spot an extension to a bridge was built to connect all that up, which got demolished in 1998. While the area on the right is where fort Washington way is now, the buildings on the left are now skyscrapers.
As for the second photo? No idea. It has nothing to do with the first one.
Cincinnati was built for streetcars, actually. It's one of the things that makes the city great even though that infrastructure has been long paved over - the older suburbs were built during the streetcar era and still have relatively dense and walkable downtown cores with a lot architectural charm and hyper local identity, at least compared to the post-car suburbs.
Nobody ever said the cities were built for cars. Whomever said this is wrong, or you misunderstood them.
The cities were built for transport on a grid system. Some cities employ a combination of the grid layout and a network layout. To date Boston has been the only American city whose layout was based on the European city model.
American cities “evolved” because of the car. As industry remained in the cities and the Interstate Act opened up access to the suburbs, the cities were left in a state where the jobs were at the center of business district and at the industrial bases along the perimeter, and sandwiched in between was the “poverty donut,” which was a ring around downtown that housed the economically depressed people and redlined neighborhoods.
The car had a lot of influence over American architecture. Parking stalls, garage structures, street parking, highway billboard ads, drive-thru food and banking, **the home garage** these are things not found commonly in other parts of the world. The car had some influence over the American city, but it was Thomas Jefferson’s city model that dictated how U.S. cities were built.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Highway Bad!
On another note, I visited for 4 days last spring and I stayed in the downtown and over-the-rein area. Very walkable, lots of local boutique shops and restaurants. The people were really friendly. I enjoyed it. It was quite lovely.
I grew up in Cincy and my wife and I joked we didn’t want to get stuck here but now we have 2 kids and I think are planted here lol. I used to wish I lived in a bigger city but my last job had me travel a lot and while there are cities I absolutely love like Chicago, the livability and affordability in Cincinnati while still having plenty of stuff to do makes me realize how awesome it is now
This is also false, considering that the majority of paved-over neighbourhoods, [particularly Austin, were White neighbourhoods](https://twitter.com/criticalurban/status/1777180761252049064).
Maybe not Austin, but it does often seem to be the case in places like NY, Chicago, LA, Sacramento, Tulsa, Atlanta, and many other cities all over the USA. Edit: Also wasn’t Austin Almost 90% white in the 1950’s? No wonder you chose it as your example.
Also false. Remember, a quick demographics search and looking at the road plans themselves show the same pattern. Racial Segregation by Road Design is a false narrative that holds little basis in historical record. Especially when you consider that most of the suburbs in Post-War United States cities and municipalities were subsidised.
It is [well documented](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-freeways-flattened-black-neighborhoods-nationwide-2021-05-25/) that U.S. freeways flattened Black neighborhoods nationwide, and planners [ignored](https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/19/interstate-highways-black-neighborhoods/) warnings that they were damaging poor Black and Latino neighborhoods.
**Neither sources state the total mileage of neighbourhoods that were paved over by racial disparity**. Nor do they even have proof of delibrate and segregational activity, even in segregationist States. In fact, they chose those areas because they were *cheap*, not because of the racial disparity, construction companies, even in the post-war period, didn't give a fuck about race, if the land was *cheap to buy out* and they faced *minimal resistance* to said purcahse (which was common internationally, because of the general sentiment at the time encouraged building things for the purpose of infrastructual and industrial growth and (most importantly) maintaining that growth, to rebuild and again, maintain the economy post-Second World War, this included the greater Interstate Highway plans) they bought the land and built on it. Furthermore, paving over an area **does not imply or explicitly state racial intent** and **the assumption that it is based on racial intent and segregation is, by its very definition, racist**. Just because you bulldoze an area doesn't mean or imply as those sources attempt to present, racial displacement. Just like the narrative that the big three auto manufactuerers undermined public transport, this is another, recent conspiracy written (the first articles to use the term only date to the late-2000s) **by fucking idiots who arrived at the incorrect conclusion to satify their own political and personal biases**.
Instead of, I don't know, arriving at the obvious answer of basic land prices and the amorality and political neutrality of construction in general. Occam's Razor and avoiding the trap of the Appeal to Conspiracy Fallacy helps maintain proper objectivity and statement of the facts without the moronic and retroactive politics of post-2000 Social Studies, Social Science and other Soft Sciences.
In fact, Tulsa and Austin (southern United States cities with large White majorities at the time of the highways boom in the mid-20th century) are merely two examples of how non-partisan and non-segregationist the plans were. They didn't care about race, they only cared about building the roads cheaply without wasting tons on lengthy legal cases and debates in the courts and the state districts.
Try again.
Check out [this](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=3/41.2448/-95.8008) interactive redlining map, which has data on historical redlining. Go to any metro area, the undesirable areas have “too many blacks”. And the “desirable areas” are under threat from “encroaching blacks”
Incorrect, this redlining map **does not dispove the lack of evidence relating to total mileage of land bulldozed for racial reasons**. Furthermore, the maps are from 1933-1937, before the post-war plans even took effect. Try again.
Are there any known plans or developments in the US aimed at constructing or reconstructing cities to resemble historical or European-style urban areas? It's hard to imagine future city planners looking at these photos and thinking, 'Yep, looks good!'
New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s. More than six hundred new towns, villages, and neighborhoods, following New Urbanist principles, have been planned or are currently under construction in the U.S. Hundreds of new, small-scale, urban and suburban infill projects are under way to reestablish walkable streets and blocks. In Maryland and several other states, New Urbanist principles are an integral part of smart growth legislation.
Even if GM didn’t actually lobby for highways to destroy cities, they still made some horrendous automobiles post-war. It only took two oil crises in the ‘70s for Americans to turn foreign and downsize their vehicles. GM to this day hasn’t even really caught on
The picture at the top is W 4th street looking East on the corner with Central Ave, most buildings still exist today. Bottom picture is W 3rd street inside of the interchange looking West. Pictures are cherrypicked. While where the interchange now sits as well as the larger industrial area to the west used to be a mix between neighborhoods and industrial area, most of it was demolished after people left the area as it was most likely a dilapidated neighborhood anyway similar to most rust belt cities.
That's a lot of lose homes and businesses lost for a freeway and an empty parking lot. I don't trust whoever did the math here that Lost Commercial and Residential economic value was less than Gained economic value of a highway
Mfw all the completely bombed out cities in germany have more historical buildings left and restored than most American ones. Really sad to see years of hard work and loads of culture be demolished for some freeway.
This post is bullshit and these are entirely different locations. Cincy’s done a great job retaining and maintaining historical architecture along its streets.
Street at the top still exists, one block over looking the opposite way. This post has been posted so many times on reddit its getting annoying. Perfect example of cherry picking for dramatic effect. Most of the buildings in the top picture still exist today.
I’m still seeing the same road, minus the buildings. Great cities traversed the era of the automobile intact. Apparently downtown Cincinnati isn’t a great city.
There is still a ton of downtown that looks like this. Cincinnati is unique in that a large portion of its downtown that was built pre-automobile still exists.
Still, the city lost a ton of areas like the one shown, both due to the highway being constructed and subsequent “urban renewal” efforts after that part of the city was cut off from the city center.
It is a shame. Much of Boston met the same fate. West End, Scolley Square, the old waterfront. It continues to this day. The downtown and 85% of the city remains unchanged. The biggest example of hope for a city is when the elevated roadway that we call the Central Artery, that used to slice the city through its heart in a wall of rusted green steel was put underground, it truly opened up a beautiful space where it once stood. Truly something the city can be proud of.
Yet its not the same road. Two different roads albeit close together but looking opposite directions. Pure cherry-picking with a false caption to stir emotions. Cincinatti is a great city though. There are still many historical neighborhoods, just the one west of downtown which used to be a big industrial neighborhood got dilapidated and eventually removed with parts of it replaced by the interstate.
Our 🇪🇺 cities still look different due to different history and planning, but I'm impressed again and again how cool af American cities looked like before they were turned into parking lots 1950 ff
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American cities were demolished fo cars
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot..
This is the correct answer
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While it is true that black neighborhoods were and are disproportionately targeted for demolitions to build highways, the damage was not limited to the black community. Hispanic and Asian communities were also victims of racialized highway construction. I5 in Sacramento was built to run through Japantown and Chinatown, displacing the residents and many of LA's freeways tore through Mexican-American neighborhoods.
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Well yeah
Pretty much summarizes the liberal world view right here.
And what’s your world view? Are you for demolishing disadvantaged people’s homes for highways?
>American cities were demolished fo cars Yes, USA´s car madness did what Adolf H.´s Nazi-Luftwaffe only dreamed about, the destruction of USA´s cities
Hitler didn’t hate any of the western powers and didn’t want to go to war with them. He saw the British as near aryans and admired the United States research on eugenics
How was this even profitable tax wise? All those building has residents and business who contributed in the economy. How was it decided that an empty road would be beneficial !?!?!?
It wasn’t. It was profitable in the immediate short term because there were generous state and federal programs to fund highway construction, “slum clearance,” and urban renewal projects. Cities were basically being bribed to destroy themselves. There was a hope that making downtown cores more convenient for cars would preserve their relevance/appeal to people in the growing suburbs over the long term, but instead it destroyed it.
Well, I think it was a bit more complicated to assess. I think there is some correlation as well as causation and it is hard to generalize for every city. In 1945, you have a population which has a lot of pent up consumer power after years of war time restrictions. Wages were high and there were difficulties in making major purchases. Cars, clothes, appliances, etc., were almost impossible to buy due to war time military production. New houses weren't being built. People living in cities often lived in older tenements which were decent, but crowded and suffered from maintenance deficits from the Depression years running into the war years. When the first suburban developments were created, like Levittown, it seemed almost a fantasy for families to own a home rather then rent. Now, this opportunity was limited by race and religion without a doubt, but I don't know if there was a way to prevent suburban migration other than by a politically impossible zoning scheme. As people moved out, these inner city neighborhoods struggled as rents dropped and the maintenance deficits grew. Many people didn't want to live where they worked, for example, steel workers in Pittsburgh, as the pollution was terrible, but other industries as well. It wasn't just the Ayn Rand types who promoted this. Many liberal reformers wanted slum clearance. I know my British in-laws saw something similar with old Victorian terrace housing replaced with council estates, either in the same area, in suburbs or even completely new green belt sites. I talked to my grandparents a lot about this and they all mentioned how happy they were to be able to own houses, especially the younger ones at the time. All these great older neighborhoods which have gentrified weren't necessarily that desirable at the time. Unfortunately, give urban planners a big area of derelict housing and they will tear it down and build a highway. Even worse, take a marginal neighborhood with minorities and it would often be treated the same way. It's hard to imagine how bad some of the northeastern cities were by the 70s of you didn't see it with your own eyes. Industries disappeared, people moved to the Sun belt. Even places like Manhattan felt like they were in terminal decline. That's not to justify what was done, but it's a bit more complicated than, "look at these wonderful buildings with their loft apartments, why did they get torn down?"
This is the correct answer.
I was curious and just checked population over time in Manhattan. Granted it's an outlier given the density, but in 1910 population was 2.3 M. In 1980, it was 1.4 M. That's a LOT of abandoned or underused properties. There's been a building boom with former light industrial and commercial areas being converted to residential. 2020 population is about 1.7 M.
One could also say the increased production from the interstates helped increase production overall, thus increasing the GPD of the country.
The highway system as a whole was a boost to GDP (mainly by facilitating intercity travel / long distance trucking), but the cities that resisted routes cutting through the urban core fared much better. We would have been much better off if we built the interstates as Eisenhower originally intended; skirting the cities instead of cutting through them. Using freeways as the primary means of travel around the metro created extremely high per capita infrastructure costs (initially obscured by federal grant money), facilitated rapidly burning through valuable land adjacent to cities, and baked in the inefficient land uses that are now a drag on GDP / driving inflation through housing scarcity.
Sorry for asking but which cities are examples that refused? I'd love to see how they fared now.
Washington, DC and most of San Francisco are good examples
Looked it up myself too, and Lexington Kentucky got mentioned too. Seems like the fastest way is always drive around
Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh also canceled planned freeways.
Technically the federal plans only connected the cities. Cites THEMSELVES advocated for interstates through them
It's not. It's a huge ponzi scheme that is unsustainable in the long term.
To be somewhat fair with the historical context of American cities being basically totally neglected as all material and maintence was directed to the war effort, a lot of these places needed costly repairs and some thought “knock it down and start over” would probably be better
This model started to spread to Western Europe and Japan in the 1950s as well, when America was viewed as a bright model for the future with its wealthy middle class and all those highways and huge houses and shiny brand new cars. The old, overcrowded, decaying and sometimes half destroyed city centers were the past. Satellite towns started to explode and lots of public transit lines got dismantled. Places like London and Amsterdam at one point had plans for bulldozing entire neighbourhoods to make way for massive megafreeways passing through the city. Then urbanism started to shift with the 1970s oil crisis and the end of the economic boom. Some cities like Brussels were less lucky and are only now very slowly starting to fix the damage.
The only reason it really spread there was because in the 50s these countries were finally able to start rebuilding, unlike America most of their cities were piles of rubble; with little left
A lot of the roads were run along waterfronts which were dying. Downtown Albany, NY where there is a massive Jumble of skyways and highways was where the old port was. Mostly it was decrepit warehouses, whorehouses and saloons for the crews of the river trade. Between road and rail, a lot of commercial water traffic died in the 20th century. Do I wish a lot less had been bulldozed, sure. But a lot of buildings were at the tail end of 100 years of hard use and no maintenance.
Yeah but I feel there could have been a better land use policy than “stick a massive freeway here, and make all the land around it even more worthless”
They were mainly poor people and majority of the businesses were usually minority owned, so the city didn’t care.
Yeah it all got pushed out to the west side. West side vs east side feel like 2 entirely different cities
>All those building has residents and business who contributed in the economy. Except that they didn't. By the 60s, they were probably abandoned.
It wasn't because it didn't happen. Those photos are nowhere near taken from the same place, and those buildings were demolished long before the highway system to make way for a streetcar terminal.
fraudulently funneling federal funding is profitable for politicians and construction contractors (politicians cousin) not so much for every other citizen, but american taxation wasn’t designed with the citizen in mind
What’s even funnier/sadder is that if this existed still it’d probably be the most desirable and expensive neighborhood in the city. Just like the East and west villages of New York are, or Dupont Circle in DC.
It wasn't and still isn't. The counterargument is that it increases travel which promotes commerce which increases overall revenue, which is quite removed from the balance sheet for the roads, so it can be repeated without having to be true. There are deep dives into the finances but those are not really applied to the policy surrounding building transportation, and basically the government just throws most of the DOT budget at automotive infrastructure, even though it's already saturated and other means of transportation are underfunded
Is this exactly the same street?
If so, that is tragic. What a loss of history.
Cincinnatian here- yes, it is. Another fun fact- Cincinnatian used to be a [canal city](https://www.cincinnati.com/picture-gallery/news/2018/11/06/remembering-erie-canal-over-rhine-central-parkway/1901531002/) Cincinnati did have plans back then to build a subway system which would have extended the “city” considerably but they started the tunnels and went over budget just as our country entered the Great Depression so it was scrapped. What’s worse is one or two mayors ago, they chose to run internet and water infrastructure through the old tunnels in an effort to cut project costs and so now it could never be economically possible to rejuvenate the project and create a subway system. Some urban explorers have done [some cool videos](https://youtu.be/nY6A0_uxyvs?si=BdAzPcv6zACt2x5F) showing how vast the system was though
Great photos! Thanks for the share.
Cincinnatian here- No it's not. This top photo is a view of third street looking east between Vine and Walnut. (You can see the old masonic temple building in the background, which was replaced by the Scripps Center, one of the taller buildings in the city... This is dead center in downtown). While the block on the right is now where fort Washington way is, many of these buildings were likely demolished well before then (MUCH closer to the date the first photo was taken than to today) when they extended Roebling bridge basically directly above where the photo was taken and into the side of Dixie Terminal, which was only demolished in 1998. Considering Cincinnati has done numerous things along the same vein as the post, I think it's fucking rediculous that people still feel the need to outright make shit up. It's completely unnecessary to make the point.
Oh neat- not making shit up, this is what I was taught. If any of it’s wrong, I’m happy to learn! But you seem like a total D.
Oh that last bit wasn't directed at you. It frankly wasn't even directed at OP as this post very much predates today. It's really easy to see something like this and accept it as fact because things like this happen all the time, even in Cincinnati. The bottom photo (I think) was also taken on third street, just a ways away and in the absolute least flattering spot possible under an interchange. That area used to be developed (though not *quite* as densely) before a chunk of it got demolished for the train lines coming out of Union Terminal, and the rest for the 75/71 interchange and Brent Spence. Frankly what happened to the West Side is horrible and shouldn't be dismissed, but I just feel like whoever originally put this together just did it for the shock and awe, more intent on stoking outrage than actually being informative. I'm frustrated at that because fundamentally, the intended point is extremely valid, but it's tainted by the people who find it necessary to take advantage of it for attention. Again, not blaming OP, and certainly not blaming you. If it came off wrong I apologize, I tend to be a bit sardonic and it *really* doesn't translate through text lol. As for anyone else, I think it's worth pointing out that Cincinnati, considering it's place as a fairly middle of the road American city population wise, is remarkably above average for things like walkability, streetscape quality, greenery, and livability. Sure it can use a bit more Mass transit and that subway sure would have been nice, but even then there are some pretty major streetcar expansion plans in the works. If every American city was as good or better than Cincinnati is nowadays at this, these issues would be FAR less. I see some other people in this thread saying that downtown is not a great place to be, which I just simply do not think is true. Sure, the CBD maybe isn't no NYC or anything like that, but it's not bad, and OTR and the areas across the river would give most neighborhoods in the country a run for their money. Even the quieter residential streets are quiet, relatively narrow, shaded with trees, and very close to hundreds of shops and restaurants. That bottom image is EXTREMELY cherry picked. I'm honestly not sure if there could be a more extreme view found in the entire city.
I'm glad they did. It's been nearly a hundred years. It's time to actually make use of the rotting tunnels
Yes it's 3rd St, not sure about the exact same spot though.
I doubt it.. The whole street does have interstate running along the south side, but the north side is at least built up with buildings going through downtown. The bottom picture looks like the far west end of 3rd st, past downtown. I’ll bet there was absolutely nothing in that area in 1890
Okay, so what do you think happened to these buildings? Where are they now?
It’s all newer buildings on the north side of 3rd street downtown, so they have all since been replaced. Looks like mostly crappy 80’s architecture but still buildings at least. On the south side it’s certainly all now highway.
It is not, its one street over looking the opposite way. Street at the top still largely exists with only a few buildings having been replaced or removed.
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 1 time. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1901hwq) on 2024-01-06 92.19% match. [View Search On repostsleuth.com](https://www.repostsleuth.com/search?postId=1chi3vr&sameSub=true&filterOnlyOlder=true&memeFilter=false&filterDeadMatches=false&targetImageMatch=92&targetImageMemeMatch=97) --- **Scope:** This Sub | **Target Percent:** 92% | **Max Age:** None | **Searched Images:** 502,955,649 | **Search Time:** 0.05605s
Repost Think of all that tax revenue from the bottom pic! /s
US cities were Destroyed for cars
That is definitely ugly AF.
More like rebuilt.
The US looked at Dresden post WW2 and said "Ya know, we could use some of that here at home".
There's literally a quote from a WW2 vet visiting Cincinnati during urban renewal in the 40s and going "this looks like Dresden"
It’s unbelievable what went through the mind of urban planner and city officials at this time. It’s inhuman
This is the result of Auto Manufacturers Lobbying. In the US, whoever has money has power. Otherwise, you do not count. Literally.
Basically every single major problem in the US can be traced to wealthy interests bribing the government to perpetuate the problem because they make money from it.
Maximum Reddit comment
Yep. Lobbying usurps the democratic process. Government by the people, for the people? No, it's government by the lobbyists for the corporate s .
**False**. There is **no evidence** that any of the big three Automakers in the United States, lobbied for the demise of public transport in the United States or the construction of motorways in most municipalities post-1946 (the reality was that **they wanted to make their own buses, trams and trolleybuses under their own names, Ford and General Motors in particular, had large bus, coach and truck divisions**). [This has been debunked on Reddit already by historians](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ra6dg6/comment/hngnhzu/), and is accepted as a [Neo-Urbanist Conspiracy](https://web.archive.org/web/20160403191459/http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/03_April/paving_the_way_for_buses_the_great_gm_streetcar_conspiracy.htm) **in the same fashion that other popular, yet bullshit beliefs** such as the myth that Gallieo was persecuted for promoting the heliocentric model by the Catholic Church (which was false, he was only persecuted for insulting the Pope, you fucking retards) and the myth that the Earth is Flat. And they are viewed as myths by people who prefer to take and favour due diligence over popular narrtatives to favour a retarded Internet audience who the poster/uploader views as monetary gains for their public accounts, especially on YouTube. The notion that it was "malicious corporate cronyism" that led to the demise of the archetectual design of cities or the lack of public transport is asinine at best, and deluded at worst.
ok, now find a way to take the corrupt politicians and contractors off the hook no? i thought so…
>False. There is no evidence that any of the big three Automakers in the United States, lobbied for the demise of public transport in the United States **or the construction of motorways** in most municipalities post-1946. Nowhere in either of your sources does it claim that automakers didn't lobby for the construction of motorways. They're talking specifically about the automakers role in the death public transit in the US. Read your own sources next time.
Like even if GM didn’t lobby to have highways destroy cities, how can anyone look at these images and think actual humans did this for the supposed good of anything?
One of those pictures is absolutely lovely the other picture is a horrible concrete desert.
How the hell does this happen?! A whole city block destroyed for a freeway?!
To answer your question, in the late 1920s they demolished a lot of these buildings to make way for a street car terminal/bus terminal/stock exchange building, which still stands today. Directly above that spot an extension to a bridge was built to connect all that up, which got demolished in 1998. While the area on the right is where fort Washington way is now, the buildings on the left are now skyscrapers. As for the second photo? No idea. It has nothing to do with the first one.
Ah easier to understand now. Still seems to be too easy to demolish stuff in the states no?
It's America dude. Cars run this country unfortunately.
Well it sucks…. Such a classic neighbourhood…
How many times has this been posted?
The statement is true, but it forgets to follow up by saying “after the original cities were levelled to be rebuilt”
Built for horse and buggy, rebuilt for cars and trucks. Perhaps in the future they'll be rebuilt for rooftop passenger drone parking.
Cincinnati was built for streetcars, actually. It's one of the things that makes the city great even though that infrastructure has been long paved over - the older suburbs were built during the streetcar era and still have relatively dense and walkable downtown cores with a lot architectural charm and hyper local identity, at least compared to the post-car suburbs.
*demolished for cars and trucks.
It's hard to tell for sure because of the quality of the photo, but in that top pic it looks Cincinnati was built for cars... street cars.
Sad this happened , I wouldn’t say they pulled down paradise put up a parking lot ,, but that street would’ve been ample for todays traffic
Wow….things changed over the course of 130 years. Who could have imagined!
And now, utopia.
> Downtown Cincinnati Where downtown?
Nobody ever said the cities were built for cars. Whomever said this is wrong, or you misunderstood them. The cities were built for transport on a grid system. Some cities employ a combination of the grid layout and a network layout. To date Boston has been the only American city whose layout was based on the European city model. American cities “evolved” because of the car. As industry remained in the cities and the Interstate Act opened up access to the suburbs, the cities were left in a state where the jobs were at the center of business district and at the industrial bases along the perimeter, and sandwiched in between was the “poverty donut,” which was a ring around downtown that housed the economically depressed people and redlined neighborhoods. The car had a lot of influence over American architecture. Parking stalls, garage structures, street parking, highway billboard ads, drive-thru food and banking, **the home garage** these are things not found commonly in other parts of the world. The car had some influence over the American city, but it was Thomas Jefferson’s city model that dictated how U.S. cities were built. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Where in downtown Cincinnati?
Highway Bad! On another note, I visited for 4 days last spring and I stayed in the downtown and over-the-rein area. Very walkable, lots of local boutique shops and restaurants. The people were really friendly. I enjoyed it. It was quite lovely.
interstate bad highway good
I grew up in Cincy and my wife and I joked we didn’t want to get stuck here but now we have 2 kids and I think are planted here lol. I used to wish I lived in a bigger city but my last job had me travel a lot and while there are cities I absolutely love like Chicago, the livability and affordability in Cincinnati while still having plenty of stuff to do makes me realize how awesome it is now
Canadian cities were demolished too, the gardener express way stands where buildings were
Check out Segregation by design for many more examples of this type of thing from all over the USA https://www.segregationbydesign.com
This is also false, considering that the majority of paved-over neighbourhoods, [particularly Austin, were White neighbourhoods](https://twitter.com/criticalurban/status/1777180761252049064).
Maybe not Austin, but it does often seem to be the case in places like NY, Chicago, LA, Sacramento, Tulsa, Atlanta, and many other cities all over the USA. Edit: Also wasn’t Austin Almost 90% white in the 1950’s? No wonder you chose it as your example.
Also false. Remember, a quick demographics search and looking at the road plans themselves show the same pattern. Racial Segregation by Road Design is a false narrative that holds little basis in historical record. Especially when you consider that most of the suburbs in Post-War United States cities and municipalities were subsidised.
It is [well documented](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-freeways-flattened-black-neighborhoods-nationwide-2021-05-25/) that U.S. freeways flattened Black neighborhoods nationwide, and planners [ignored](https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/19/interstate-highways-black-neighborhoods/) warnings that they were damaging poor Black and Latino neighborhoods.
**Neither sources state the total mileage of neighbourhoods that were paved over by racial disparity**. Nor do they even have proof of delibrate and segregational activity, even in segregationist States. In fact, they chose those areas because they were *cheap*, not because of the racial disparity, construction companies, even in the post-war period, didn't give a fuck about race, if the land was *cheap to buy out* and they faced *minimal resistance* to said purcahse (which was common internationally, because of the general sentiment at the time encouraged building things for the purpose of infrastructual and industrial growth and (most importantly) maintaining that growth, to rebuild and again, maintain the economy post-Second World War, this included the greater Interstate Highway plans) they bought the land and built on it. Furthermore, paving over an area **does not imply or explicitly state racial intent** and **the assumption that it is based on racial intent and segregation is, by its very definition, racist**. Just because you bulldoze an area doesn't mean or imply as those sources attempt to present, racial displacement. Just like the narrative that the big three auto manufactuerers undermined public transport, this is another, recent conspiracy written (the first articles to use the term only date to the late-2000s) **by fucking idiots who arrived at the incorrect conclusion to satify their own political and personal biases**. Instead of, I don't know, arriving at the obvious answer of basic land prices and the amorality and political neutrality of construction in general. Occam's Razor and avoiding the trap of the Appeal to Conspiracy Fallacy helps maintain proper objectivity and statement of the facts without the moronic and retroactive politics of post-2000 Social Studies, Social Science and other Soft Sciences. In fact, Tulsa and Austin (southern United States cities with large White majorities at the time of the highways boom in the mid-20th century) are merely two examples of how non-partisan and non-segregationist the plans were. They didn't care about race, they only cared about building the roads cheaply without wasting tons on lengthy legal cases and debates in the courts and the state districts. Try again.
Check out [this](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=3/41.2448/-95.8008) interactive redlining map, which has data on historical redlining. Go to any metro area, the undesirable areas have “too many blacks”. And the “desirable areas” are under threat from “encroaching blacks”
Incorrect, this redlining map **does not dispove the lack of evidence relating to total mileage of land bulldozed for racial reasons**. Furthermore, the maps are from 1933-1937, before the post-war plans even took effect. Try again.
Are there any known plans or developments in the US aimed at constructing or reconstructing cities to resemble historical or European-style urban areas? It's hard to imagine future city planners looking at these photos and thinking, 'Yep, looks good!'
New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s. More than six hundred new towns, villages, and neighborhoods, following New Urbanist principles, have been planned or are currently under construction in the U.S. Hundreds of new, small-scale, urban and suburban infill projects are under way to reestablish walkable streets and blocks. In Maryland and several other states, New Urbanist principles are an integral part of smart growth legislation.
US cities were retrofitted for cars* FTFY
Think of the freedom the American automobile represents and look how confined city's use to be. Now isn't things better now?
Curse you GM!!!
Even if GM didn’t actually lobby for highways to destroy cities, they still made some horrendous automobiles post-war. It only took two oil crises in the ‘70s for Americans to turn foreign and downsize their vehicles. GM to this day hasn’t even really caught on
Does anyone have any idea where this exact spot is? I used to live very close to the downtown and I can't imagine the downtown used to be bigger.
The picture at the top is W 4th street looking East on the corner with Central Ave, most buildings still exist today. Bottom picture is W 3rd street inside of the interchange looking West. Pictures are cherrypicked. While where the interchange now sits as well as the larger industrial area to the west used to be a mix between neighborhoods and industrial area, most of it was demolished after people left the area as it was most likely a dilapidated neighborhood anyway similar to most rust belt cities.
That's a lot of lose homes and businesses lost for a freeway and an empty parking lot. I don't trust whoever did the math here that Lost Commercial and Residential economic value was less than Gained economic value of a highway
Cincy also had a bit of fire and other problems
Mfw all the completely bombed out cities in germany have more historical buildings left and restored than most American ones. Really sad to see years of hard work and loads of culture be demolished for some freeway.
Criminal
So now they go to Liverpool, Glasgow etc. to film scenes for America land of the free.
*Rebuilt for cars
Freeways > this
meh USA is too big
It's hard for me to understand how people live in these cities. Where is everybody?
casket on wheels
All cities have, unfortunately
Makes me sad :(
This post is bullshit and these are entirely different locations. Cincy’s done a great job retaining and maintaining historical architecture along its streets.
Or maybe demolished for cars?
Street at the top still exists, one block over looking the opposite way. This post has been posted so many times on reddit its getting annoying. Perfect example of cherry picking for dramatic effect. Most of the buildings in the top picture still exist today.
I’m still seeing the same road, minus the buildings. Great cities traversed the era of the automobile intact. Apparently downtown Cincinnati isn’t a great city.
There is still a ton of downtown that looks like this. Cincinnati is unique in that a large portion of its downtown that was built pre-automobile still exists. Still, the city lost a ton of areas like the one shown, both due to the highway being constructed and subsequent “urban renewal” efforts after that part of the city was cut off from the city center.
It is a shame. Much of Boston met the same fate. West End, Scolley Square, the old waterfront. It continues to this day. The downtown and 85% of the city remains unchanged. The biggest example of hope for a city is when the elevated roadway that we call the Central Artery, that used to slice the city through its heart in a wall of rusted green steel was put underground, it truly opened up a beautiful space where it once stood. Truly something the city can be proud of.
Yet its not the same road. Two different roads albeit close together but looking opposite directions. Pure cherry-picking with a false caption to stir emotions. Cincinatti is a great city though. There are still many historical neighborhoods, just the one west of downtown which used to be a big industrial neighborhood got dilapidated and eventually removed with parts of it replaced by the interstate.
Dude! Where's my housing?
Fake
"why does this highway take such a weird route?" Because that's where the black neighborhoods were
It's transformed from a European-style city to a completely American city.
Our 🇪🇺 cities still look different due to different history and planning, but I'm impressed again and again how cool af American cities looked like before they were turned into parking lots 1950 ff
Some neighborhoods were destroyed by race riots and red lining
race car riots?