60 Years of Urban Change

Compare aerial images from decades ago to modern satellite views to explore dramatic changes that affected downtown areas in the last half of the 20th Century.

The last half of the 20th Century made a big impact on the urban form of American cities. The most rapid change occurred during the mid-century urban renewal period that cleared large tracts of urban land for new highways, parking, and public facilities or housing projects. Fine-grained networks of streets and buildings on small lots were replaced with freeways, superblocks, and megastructures. While the period did make way for impressive new projects in many cities, many scars are still unhealed.

Urban Renewal and other city mega-projects had a specific impact on low-income neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods. Planners at every level of government often targeted poor and minority communities, especially displacing Black neighborhoods, or used projects to reinforce lines of segregation. In 1961, planners told the Daily Oklahoman that the purpose of a new freeway was not only to speed up traffic, but also “wipe out a considerable portion of the city’s blighted area.” In 1963, Black author James Baldwin declared “Urban Renewal… means Negro Removal.” The programs damaged the economic, social, and physical well-being of African Americans in cities.

We put together these sliders to show how cities have changed over half a century. Select a region to view and click and drag the slider bar as shown in the image to compare cities before and after this period.

Companion Resources & Further Reading

Freeways Without Futures is a project by the Congress for New Urbanism to spotlight the efforts of local organizers trying to remove or mitigate impacts of urban interstates. They have published reports since 2008.

Renewing Inequality (ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab) is a fantastic resource on urban renewal, with a focus on quantifying family displacements as a result of urban renewal in cities of all sizes across the United States.

Root shock: The consequences of African American dispossession (Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Journal of Urban Health, 2001) discusses the short-term and long-term consequences of urban renewal on African American well-being.

Commemoration Amid Criticism: The Mixed Legacy of Urban Renewal in Southwest Washington, DC (Francesca Russello Ammon, Journal of Planning History, 2009) presents a case study of the experience and mixed legacy of urban renewal in one of the most significant projects in the nation.

How four small cities are fighting the effects of urban renewal, Diana Budds, Curbed, 2019

The Role of Highways in American Poverty, Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, 2016

The Racist Legacy of America’s Inner City Highways, Peter Simek, D Magazine, 2016

Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them? Joseph Stromberg, Vox, 2016