City-Cidal Tendencies
America’s ubiquitous use of single use zoning is at the root of some of the biggest economic, environmental, and social issues of the day. This type of planning forces people into costly, carbon-spewing cars that promote sedentary lifestyles. This zoning puts housing in one place, work in another, and recreation in yet another, keeping people distant from their friends and workplaces, driving the loneliness epidemic. Yet anyone who’s spent time outside the US, Canada, and Australia — basically, the only countries that have this type of zoning — can attest that single use zoning is not the only way to configure towns and cities. Cities can be planned for people to live near one another, bypassing driving and isolation, and promoting social connectivity. They can have vibrant street life with shops and other amenities within walking distance. These cities can even be in America. In fact, they once were.
First published in 2014, The University of Oklahoma’s “60 Years of Urban Change” is a startling reminder that America wasn’t always the land of sprawling, indistinguishable suburbs. The ‘before’ images show the type of population density many urbanists today long for. The ‘after’ images show the cities bisected by massive highways and covered with surface parking lots. The project shows what many large American cities looked like before and after their transformation — or deformation — by mid-20th century urban renewal initiatives.
Urban renewal was a movement that swept the US and several global cities from the 1940s to 1960s. The movement tracked with the general movement from cities to suburbs — a movement that has more or less continued to this day. For the most part, urban renewal leveled many older, smaller urban buildings to make way for larger buildings and highways, shifting cities from being people centric to car centric. But as the U of O’s aerial pictures testify, most American cities were dense, easily traversed by foot or public transit, and they were filled with “fine grained architecture,” not just cookie-cutter highrises. Particularly surprising was the former density of cities like Houston and Atlanta, which today are paragons of car-centricity and sprawl. The pictures are a stark reminder that a lot of stuff that is now bad was once good. I’d argue this stuff can be made good again.
Check out the full set of images and notes at U of O’s website.
A version of this piece was originally published at https://deepfriedlander.substack.com.
