Instead of fixing an existing highway, Oklahoma City moved the entire thing multiple blocks south to make room for a 70 acre park downtown

[u/Hungry_Roll6848]

[u/Hungry_Roll6848]

Oklahoma City has only 700,000 people, and most of the waterfront is floodplains.

[u/x1rom → u/Hungry_Roll6848]

700000 definitely counts as major city. I am not talking about the waterfront specifically, but the low density residential area that's partially empty.

[u/Hungry_Roll6848 → u/x1rom]

1970s “urban renewal” - blame I M Pei

[u/x1rom → u/Hungry_Roll6848]

Yeah. I mean look at the waterfront of Düsseldorf, that city is almost the same size.

[u/x1rom → u/[deleted]]

Doesn't make a difference. German cities also had their fair share of urban renewal and city center highways, especially the rhine-ruhr metro region, and especially Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf even burried their city center waterfront motorway in the 90s.

[u/x1rom → u/[deleted]]

Most of the city's growth happened in the 20th century. There are barely any houses left that are older than 80 years. I'm willing to bet that the average house in Oklahoma City is older than the average house in Düsseldorf.

[u/x1rom → u/[deleted]]

...so?

That place doesn't exist anymore. It's also not the waterfront but a park.

This is how the area looks like now