
60 Years of Urban Change (2015) - inamberclad
http://iqc.ou.edu/2015/02/10/60yrswest/
======
CalRobert
More dramatic imagery of this effect is found at
[http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-
bombs.ht...](http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.html)
\- "Parking Bomb" is an apt description.

------
davidw
See also: "The Suburban Experiment"

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-
suburb...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-
experiment)

------
orbitur
The southeast US, the region where I grew up, just makes me sad, especially
now that I'm living in the northeast.

Looks like some places like Nashville and Atlanta actually __had __density,
but it was wiped out in favor of highways.

One of my biggest dreams is to move back down south (because fuck winters
here), but I've gotten so accustomed to having good public transit and the
possibility of living (and not struggling) without a car.

~~~
lainga
Boston makes me sad, too. Look at the giant chunk that was torn out for the
Government Center. You can see how windswept and barren it looks from space.

~~~
oftenwrong
The entire old West End neighbourhood was destroyed.

Before: [http://thewestendmuseum.org/wordpress/wp-
content/gallery/urb...](http://thewestendmuseum.org/wordpress/wp-
content/gallery/urban_renewal/urban_web.jpg)

After: [http://thewestendmuseum.org/wordpress/wp-
content/gallery/urb...](http://thewestendmuseum.org/wordpress/wp-
content/gallery/urban_renewal/renewal_01.jpg)

Read more: [http://thewestendmuseum.org/history-of-the-west-end/urban-
re...](http://thewestendmuseum.org/history-of-the-west-end/urban-renewal/#)

I recommend visiting The West End Museum if you are in Boston.

------
oftenwrong
The comparisons for the northeast are the most depressing. Huge swaths of
cities were simply destroyed, and some of them never recovered.

[http://iqc.ou.edu/2015/01/21/60yrsnortheast/](http://iqc.ou.edu/2015/01/21/60yrsnortheast/)

------
dasanman
As a european, its pretty funny to see cities where the streets are so
parallel

~~~
davidw
The Romans laid things out in a grid.

~~~
danieka
Except for Rome itself which was rebuilt very hastily after the sack of Rome
in 390 BC. But everywhere they went, particularly for military encampments,
they brought the grid with them.

------
jzymbaluk
What's interesting to me is how little has changed. The biggest thing that
changed in most of those cities is that there's big ugly highways cutting
through the middle of the city now.

------
xefer
People should check out the Earth Explorer site from the USGS:

[https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/](https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/)

It has a huge number of high-resolution aerial photos for large swaths of the
country going back to the 1930s, and not just urban areas. The interface is
really clunky but once you get the hang of it you can find an enormous amount
of data.

I couldn't find mention of it but I'm sure the OP site obtained their photos
from there.

------
mc32
One thing I noticed is that it looks like (maybe being fooled by the older
b&w) most of the cities shown have increased their greenery. That is, they
seem to have gained trees —a good development.

~~~
brailsafe
Not intentionally trying to be a downer, but look at Albuquerque.

------
adrianN
So much space reserved for parking cars.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Land was cheap. At the time the population was less, the suburbs were less
city-like and suburbs had a larger share of the population/money relative to
the cities. It made sense to reserve the space so that those people could come
to the city to work, shop, go to the dentist, etc, etc. Times have changed and
that's not economically viable anymore or at least not on the same scale.
Better to develop the land for some other use. If reserving the same amount of
space for people to park made economic sense today we'd still do it.

------
n0tme
Wow. This is some perfect alignment.

------
njarboe
I stopped reading this article after the first example of Denver. I would not
trust this article not being mostly propaganda because, if one looks in detail
at the first pair of photos, they are not close to displaying the same area.
One third of the right of the 2014 photo shows where the grid changes
directions with a very large N-S road. The one on the left from 1953 is
shifted far to the left to where this part of Denver is not in the picture. It
is hard to tell if even the scales (also not shown) of the photos are the
same.

Edit: I decided to look at the rest of the photos after writing this comment
and it is obvious in some of the other photos that the author somehow thinks
it is useful to have photos of before and after that don't even overlap at
all. Oakland, for example, has maybe 10% overlap with one showing mostly west
Oakland and the other showing the Lake Merritt area. Maybe my browser is just
not displaying things right. I'll interpret these strange before and after
images that way and move on.

~~~
zazen
> Maybe my browser is just not displaying things right.

Yah, there should be a slider... Initial view shows left half of the area from
before, right half from after, and you drag the slider to change the ratio.
You might want to reconsider your browser choice if it also failed to display
the "how to use" instructions at the top right.

~~~
njarboe
Thanks for the info. Works great in Chrome.

