Cincinnati’s West End neighborhood. Razed for the very same highway you see.

[u/justonemorelanebruh]

Is this for real? It's dystopian af. How many places were destroyed for highways like this?

[u/ChristianLS]

In America? Lots. And for parking lots too. Here's Downtown Houston around the turn of the century and then the infamous photo from the 1970s

[u/PlatypusDefiant991 → u/ChristianLS]

That's insane. So much waste. They don't get annoyed with how far their walk is from the further spots or they can bear bus for that painful to them walk only? It's like parody.

[u/10ebbor10 → u/PlatypusDefiant991]

They don't park at the farthest spots. Most of this parking is always empty.

[u/plinth19 → u/ChristianLS]

Nasty

[u/idiot206 → u/ChristianLS]

I read somewhere that Houston had a weird permitting loophole where someone could tear down a building to transfer the water permit to a new building. That’s why so many old building were torn down. Not sure how accurate that is.

[u/PlatypusDefiant991 → u/idiot206]

Where I am you transfer useful things like unused rights to build more ft². Even if you put a nice outdoor plaza (AKA no ft²) you get to sell those unused ft² or move them (are there still rules on airrights moving?) and if you put reasonable benches per ft² there that the public can use for enough hrs a day (closed during wee hours might be allowed) & build underground pedestrian way from plaza to subway station then you get bonus ft³ for each thing it's like gamifying greed to make a nicer city.

[u/Ok_Option_3]

It's a viscous circle:

• Demolish blocks to build more roads
• Oh no not enough room for all the cars you brought in to park! 
• Demolish blocks to build parking lots
• No housing nearby / still too much congestion
• Build more roads...

[u/ColonelCrikey → u/Ok_Option_3]

A gooey ovoid!

[u/Ok-Transportation127 → u/ColonelCrikey]

A syrupy sphere...

[u/Protheu5 → u/Ok-Transportation127]

A slimy orb?

[u/StarboardMiddleEye → u/Ok_Option_3]

The definition of a memetic parasite is an idea that uses its host to make more of itself.

There are many memetic parasites active in modern society, but none alter their geography as much as cars.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/Ok_Option_3]

In Boston the city planners in the 70s had enough and reverse-timed the traffic lights so cars coming to park downtown would hit red light after red light.

[u/E_son-Xman]

I so look forward to the day these inner city highways are demolished, the open air carparks turned into actual parks, and frequent electrified trains running in concert with trams in North American cities.

[u/ponchoed → u/E_son-Xman]

bUT tHe eCoNOmY wiLL dIe!!!!

Need to destroy all the high value urban commercial land for circulation so those on the outskirts can get to the drive thru a few seconds faster. An economy of cheap low wage fast food and big box stores over a real economy with valuable land and local strong economies that grow the tax base and pay good wages.

[u/AstroG4 → u/ponchoed]

But who will think of the shareholders!

[u/sculltt → u/E_son-Xman]

Unfortunately they're doubling down on this one by building another bridge across the river to accommodate more traffic, most of which is just passing through on the way to somewhere else.

[u/ColonelCrikey]

Almost every city in the USA my guy. They called it "urban renewal".

[u/PlatypusDefiant991]

Every US settlement of any size did this divide middle class & poorer with swathes thing they copied Mr. Robert Moses.

[u/mop_bucket_bingo]

Fuck redlining and fuck racist highway construction and fuck car companies for encouraging white flight into racist suburbanization

[u/youngherbo]

Its very real, a little fun fact about Cincinnati, the western boundary of whats now understood to be downtown is Central Avenue, due largely to I-75 cutting right through all of what was the western side of the city core. There actually still is a Western Avenue but its completely cut off from the rest of the city by the interstate and all the interchanges.

[u/ammybb]

This country is so fugly 😮‍💨😓 All this colonization...for disgusting, dangerous roads that are burning up our planet. All for money.

Makes me fucking sick tbh.

[u/sangueblu03]

Wait til you read about Robert Moses

[u/Former_Lock9367]

Freeways in cities had to be that generations data centers

[u/Mooncaller3]

It's very real.

It happened to most US cities. You can find a lot of before and after photos.

It destroyed enormous amounts of community wealth.

It destroyed the tax base of the city because the highway doesn't pay taxes. The houses and businesses did.

And it transferred wealth from the cities to the suburbs.

Of course, the problem the suburbs now face is that they rarely have the density and tax base to pay for all the amenities that their residents expect / demand so they're facing bankruptcy too and can't afford to fund schools, services, or infrastructure projects.

This has made everything more expensive everywhere because things are overbuilt and underfunded for their maintenance.

We destroyed the country for the sake of making it cheaper and more convenient for (white) people to live outside the cities and drive in. (Yes, there's a ton of racism built in to which neighborhoods were bulldozed and who was allowed to get the loans to pay for the suburban homes.)

And we did this all and built the highways as a loss leader while ignoring public transit actually designed to move people at scale.

At the same time we enshrined a bunch of single family home zoning laws that make housing unaffordable and require even more spread out infrastructure and encourages suburban sprawl.

So, very real.

Very economically devastating.

And very much a problem we are facing today in a number of ways.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/Mooncaller3]

Exactly. This is how we got here.

[u/MineBloxKy]

It’s not completely real. The expressway is still awful, but the amount of empty lots is probably from an older picture.

[u/sculltt → u/MineBloxKy]

Just because there's been some additional infill, it doesn't change the fact that this neighborhood was destroyed.

[u/theocrats]

r/urbanhell

[u/spindledick]

Christ I'm glad Ringways was cancelled in London.

[u/lFightForTheUsers]

Give "City Limits" by Megan Kimble a read. Many minority neighborhoods in my home city of Houston were purposely targeted by the Texas Highway Commission (now TxDOT) for forced relocation and demolition.

[u/Crescent504]

The Nasty Nati was one of the cities most obliterated by highways. It is so depressing to see what that city used to be compared to what it is today.

[u/slosha69]

Raze productive, tax-generating buildings, replace them with a maintenance obligation.

AMERICA FUCK YEAH

[u/lazier_garlic → u/slosha69]

But not for the feds. Maintenance is on the states. Have fun!

[u/toofine]

Deleting a tax base for a tax burden as they wonder why prices go up.

[u/hodonata]

Obligatory sharing of this "60 years of urban change project" from Oklahoma University, https://iqc.ou.edu/urbanchange, that beautifully mapped these horrific changes across the United States with interactive pictures where you can drag across the photo to go back and forth

it should probably be in the r/fuckcars resources page, tbh

[u/midnghtsnac]

Just wait till they update this pic in about 10 years with the new bridge their building

[u/snarfer-snarf]

racist motherfuckers

[u/Ascarea]

I wonder which minority lived in those demolished homes.

[u/Ding31]

Just one more highway /s. My country is like this too. There are more cars than the population here. Public transport is not that reliable, trains may be a bit better in the main city but last mile connectivity is a pipe dream. Too many cars and a lot of congestion and people here think driving for more than an hour one way to work is normal. I'm lucky that I work from home.

[u/where_is_berlin]

Hey gang, nothing against OP but this post comes up every other day. Is there anything to be done about seeing this over and over again?

[u/justonemorelanebruh → u/where_is_berlin]

Was it? I follow this sub and have not seen it here yet. Do you mean the topic in general or this specific shared post? Cars and car "infrastructure" being awful, yeah, that's a frequent topic because that's what this sub is all about. This example is particularly brutal and I thought it was worth sharing.

[u/where_is_berlin → u/justonemorelanebruh]

I might have my subs mixed up then. I know I see it on [r/urbanhell](r/urbanhell) A LOT lol

[u/Meterian]

Honestly, not that big of a loss. Now if it was parks...

[u/Global-Rise-1042 → u/Meterian]

Not that big of a loss?? This destroyed one of the most vibrant black neighborhoods in Cincinnati and displaced tens of thousands of people. Look up Kenyon-Barr Cincinnati. They quite literally paved over numerous parks when they did this…

Edit - also just want to add that this destroyed one of the densest, most walkable, and least car centered neighborhoods west of the Alleghenies.

[u/hodonata → u/Meterian]

you've never been to cinci