How Urban Renewal Ruined Everything

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great video! i went to belmont and took an urban planning class and we talked a lot about north nashville and how much the highway system hurt it. thanks for talking about this subject!

Hey Garrison,
Great video as always! As someone who grew up around the Charlotte & Hampton Roads communities that were very much affected by Urban Renewal back in the day I very much see the effects of it as a 23 year old. A LOT of history was lost to time, only to be remembered in books and stories. Which is really really devastating – as someone who is a local archival preservationist in my county I see it as a loss for minority communities and for all. My girlfriend is from Wilimington, NC and even though Wilmington has always been a small city – a lot of black history was lost due to redevelopment and gentrification of historically black neighborhoods. A neighborhood bares her last name who she is descended from. At one time Wilmington had a lot of theatres and hotels and general nightlife that was cutting edge back in the day, now due to people having interest of moving to Wilmington, most of that nightlife is still coming back. Not only the nightlife but communities as well, local family own grocers and small businesses were lost. Not to mention the horrible systemic racism that affects Wilmington till this day.
– Eli

This happened everywhere in America. And it continues. Developers are salivating over more neighborhoods in NYC, Atlanta, Los Angeles etc. currently, all new housing are expensive condos and apartments. Relegating low income people to projects and segregated neighborhoods.

MANNN if you are interested I can show you the pictures of how the neighborhood looked before I40 came through…there are pictures of the interstate being built and how many homes were razed including churches. There is also info showing the interstate was supposed to take a totally different path THEN they consciously chose to take it right down Jefferson St. The city of Nashville has talked about putting a roof over part of interstate to recoup some of the land lost but it's too late as that area is now being gentrified and the people initially impacted won't be able to be a part of the joy of any new plans.

95 in Richmond Virginia destroyed Black Communities. I saw it. Vibrate places.

Great vid! I note you made this before the scourge of t-Rump 2.0. I bet instead of calling out the racism of urban destruction (saying "renewal was always a lie!) that you cite, like Pres. Biden's Sec'y. of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg did, t-Rump's Sec'y of Transportation probably wants to bring it back!

1st time viewer here. Jemele Hill put me on to you Garrison.

This is an exceedingly simplistic analysis. Am I supposed to take from this that proximity to a highway predicts incarceration rates? Does that mean that middle- and upper-income people living by highways have higher rates of incarceration?

How can mid-20th Century urban renewal be wholesale condemned as racist when the government built more low-income housing than anytime before or since, mostly for the benefit of people of color? Highways actually went through many more white neighborhoods than black neighborhoods. Should we consider the white neighborhoods as having been destroyed?

You mentioned Philadelphia, where I live, but most of the highways in Philadelphia were built through white neighborhoods, and, interestingly enough, most of those neighborhoods are thriving. Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Society Hill, Queen Village, and Pennsport, all neighborhoods along I-95 in Philly, are some of the most desirable places to live in the city with high property values. Moreover, they are all walkable. Because these areas are popular, developers are building expensive new housing right up against the highway.

Urban highways benefit the people who live in cities. I live in the city and get on the urban highways that come through my neighborhood so I can have regional access. There was never a time when highways were not integrated. Everyone of all colors can get on and use the highways.

The neighborhoods in Philadelphia that suffered the most poverty and blight and had the highest concentrations of minorities are in North and West Philadelphia, where they did not build any highways. It is the sections of those areas that were left alone during urban renewal that are the most blighted and impoverished.

For the last 25 years and continuing to the present, entire swaths of Philadelphia that had been predominantly African American have been transformed to being white. You and other commentators who dump on midcentury urban renewal do so oblivious to the present mass displacement of minorities that is taking place before your eyes. You're characterizing a period that featured the mass construction of low-income housing as racist, while we're living in a period of mass black displacement caused by the private construction and rehabilitation of urban housing for the benefit of mostly whites. Homelessness is soaring right now, and we're desperate for mass construction of affordable housing as we built during urban renewal.

The parkways in and around NYC designed by Robert Moses were designed to be comfortable roadways for automotive travel, free of commercial traffic, especially trucks. The low clearances were designed to make them inhospitable to trucks. Those low clearances also kept out buses, but in the mid-20th century, 70% of white New Yorkers didn't own cars and would be the most impacted. I cannot extrapolate racism from that, yet that is the quality of popular discourse on this subject.

Keynesian economics gave rise to Urban Development under Truman as part of the New Deal started by Roosevelt. These policies continue to this day when people depend upon the government rather than taking matters into their own hands.

Great job sitting in for Dollemore! Subscribing now. This is a really great piece on North Nashville. I never knew this history, despite being here for 30 years.

As a gen z New Yorker it is common knowledge that Robert Moses was a racist bastard but a lot of older people either don’t know or just recently found out how horrible he was.

Thank you this was very good.

Please read, The Slaughter of Cities by E Michael Jones
file:///C:/Users/Bmac482/Downloads/The%20Slaughter%20of%20Cities%20by%20E%20Michael%20Jones.pdf

Revoked DEI revoke the order that protected black / poor communities from cop airs destroying the neighborhoods

I live in Denver CO and my family immigrated to this city from Mexico in the 30s. My family lived in primarily Mexican and Latino neighborhoods all across the city, but especially around Five Points or the "Harlem of the West", which was also historically Black. During urban renewal, Denver had a notorious KKK affiliated city government that led to the destruction of many different diverse neighborhoods, including the ones my family lived in. Since then, these neighborhoods have seen intense gentrification due to the cheap homes and disrepair they were left in, developers buying up all the land. Denver is the 2nd most gentrified city in America now, mostly due to the harmful practices of the 50s and their consequences in the following decades. Its a shame, but our city will rise again.

Whitey on the Moon.