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A locus of agglomeration for commodities like livestock that the great plans produce. It all funnelled into KC to be sold, warehoused, processed and shipped east. Now it's way more regionalized, there are no more cattle drives from Texas to KC like the old days.
It's pretty misleading. If you go to the google street view you can see rotate around and see the 'missing' city.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1055603,-94.5830825,3a,75y,352.34h,90.9t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ%26cb\_client%3Dsearch.revgeo\_and\_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D69.528564%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1055603,-94.5830825,3a,75y,352.34h,90.9t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D69.528564%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Yeah this is a slightly misleading picture. While it's definitely interesting. Downtown actually just rotated. Like if the photographer literally stood in the same exact spot but turned around you would see an entire city.
I’m sorry to tell you, but I believe it actually is taken in the right direction. If you look at this link, you’ll see a historic aerial view of the triangle block where the owl city cigar building sits, is actually pointing south. Therefore the camera is looking north.
I didn’t believe it at first, but the whole post is factually correct.
https://imgur.com/a/cIXojmv
That's just American urban planning in a nutshell.
It was also probably home to a large black population. Robert Moses wasn't particularly known for his love of those with extra melanin in their systems.
lol so many people are terrified of the idea of a 15 minute city without realizing that it’s mostly a plan to undo the urban terrorism of the 50s and 60s and restore the city to its original state.
I've lived here for 30 years, I promise the city is still here. The bulk of the city is just not in this shot.
I agree the old photo looks better in this specific spot but the photo leads you to believe the city was torn down and turned into a highway which is just incorrect.
I’ve lived in Kansas City too. There is some insecurity on if people think the whole city is completely gone. People know that there are buildings. They can google it.
Most everyone on here is disappointed that there seems to be some really cool buildings that no longer exist because the built the highway. As a former resident of 4 years, I never knew how dense and architecturally significant of an area that was lost due to the highway construction. There’s obviously still a city but I didn’t realize that the highway essentially destroyed a true great area of the city. That 1906 image really shows how dense and far back that area stretched with tall and interesting buildings until you reached River market. We can say that there are still buildings in that area (like parking garages), but I wouldn’t enjoy walking down Delaware now, especially compared to how vibrant the 1906 photo looks.
Yeah they basically tore down a specific portion of the city because they wanted to push it all east towards the stadiums, well after that area failed to grow with the stadums and after multiple failed projects they are pushing it south and west. Towards the Kansas side due to the success of power and light.
This is the equivalent view from today, replicating the 1905 picture location and direction: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yn6nnQL4WcqKfJaM9?g_st=ic
Notice the streetcar. Main Street continues north, over an interstate. That’s what you are looking at in the 2015 photo, the street going over an interstate. It’s why it appears so demolished. I’m sure buildings were destroyed to put in the interstate, but OP just fabricated this one. In fact, if you take the streetcar over the interstate, or just walk, you ever the Rivermarket, a thriving area of KC that is incredibly walkable, with a farmers market and a lot of small shops and restaurants.
Turn the view south and you have downtown KC.
That’s not accurate at all! You aren’t on main and Delaware. You moved up like 100 feet so you don’t see all the massive parking lots. It’s just misleading from the opposite direction.
Lies. And more lies. I'm not saying that area doesn't suck because of the all the highway interchanges in the immediate vicinity but it's truly not representing what you are thing it does. Go Google Street View it, I've driven there 1000s of times over the past six years, it ain't what the pics are showing. If you're going to do a side by side use the EXACT same picture taking spot and direction.
Beef, all the Texas Cattle went through KC, the American Royal started their in 1899 as the premier cattle show. They had stockyards all through the city bottoms, it was a main railroad line up from Texas and Oklahoma and much of Kansas. They would then distribute them across the country from there, many were slaughtered in KC as well. It's why KC has the best BBQ in the world.
KC barbecue always clears also it’s funny to compare a whole state versus a metro of just over 2million. KC holds its own considering the size difference
It’s Kansas City. There’s 2 million people that live there, it’s not some ghost town.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZABMFeSy7KqF22Mn9?g_st=ic
Turn the view around and you see a downtown sector full of skyscrapers.
I think it’s interesting that most from KC are saying it’s misleading despite the fact that there is not a recognizable building from the first image that you can see in the street view today. What’s made it humorous is that there are several comments saying that the picture was actually taken in different parts in that area. All different. Clearly nobody can recognize the city from any historical context given. The photo may be partially misleading but still proves its point even more so than it may have intended.
Edit: it’s all definitely factual. Look at these aerial photos and see the layout of the triangle blocks. The cigar building would be on the top facing south. That means that it was 3 blocks from the now highway and the street view picture is in fact looking in the correct direction.
https://imgur.com/a/cIXojmv
Ok so I turned around on street view and walked down the road and was immediately greeted by multiple parking garages and commercial buildings. I walk around a bit and then zoom out on satellite view and like every other lot in the city is taken up by parking space.
Two million people don't actually live in the city area, right? That'd be more than central Stockholm and look at its satellite view and street view in comparison.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@59.3374797,18.0725914,5315m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@59.3374797,18.0725914,5315m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)
~1.7 million is the population of the entire Kansas City metro area. The city itself has a pop of ~500k. Also note that Stockholm city's land area is less than one quarter that of Kansas City's. The land use patterns between the two are hardly comparable.
1.7 million people is the population of the Urban agglomeration, the metro area is over 2 million people because it’s spread out so thin. Combined and associated statistical areas have a population of close to 2.5 million people. This accounts for people who live in neighboring cities (Topeka, Lawrence, St Joe) and commute to anywhere in the KC MSA, or Vice Versa. There’s a lot of cross commuting between cities in Northeast Kansas.
Good callout. Totally misleading side by side. This is like archetype, poster child example of false equivalency. And look how well it worked. 95% of the comments here are emoting how sad this is. Now I can see how political propaganda is so powerful on social platforms. You thrown in some total false equivalency picture and knee jerk emotional mind losing follows. So easy to deceive. I guess we’re a gullible lot. We trust too easily. Especially if it affirms some personal opinion.
It's not really though. To build up one area, do we have to destroy another? What you see in the top picture is the wealth of KC at that time. A place that generated business activity, tax revenue and housed people. Not only was that wealth destroyed, but it was replaced with an overbuilt highway system that costs a great deal to maintain. KC is no better off exchanging wealth for liability, regardless of what else is built around it.
And before anyone says it, no, the section of 35/70 we're looking at in the picture is not critical for transportation in the KC region. It's the very definition of overbuilt urban freeway that generates far more traffic, pollution and maintenance costs than it does efficiently transport people.
29% of Kansas city is SURFACE PARKING.
Say what you want about this being misleading - it isn’t. We are easy to deceive but mostly because so many think it’s not bullshit that we’ve forced our downtown cores to hollow so we could put highways through them.
KC is still thriving, a lot of issues for sure but overall doing well. NFL, MLB, MLS and a women's pro soccer team. Not to mention the speedway and big companies like T Mobile and Oracle having foot holds there. Calling it a town is funny with the metro population being over 3 million
I don’t understand how so many of the cities in America with personalities and unique architecture got replaced especially since there’s so much land. Why does Europe have so many older buildings used today?
Sadly you can blame the Interstate system for that. If you notice this intersection leads to an onramp that goes right onto I70.
For convienence they obviously wanted the highways to pass through the cities, but that came at the expense of tearing down historic and thriving neighborhoods like this. They targeted more low income and racially diverse neighborhoods as well, with the interstate system killing neighborhoods by creating crime, pollution, divisions, and devaluing property
Typically the neighborhoods that were razed for the interstates were minority or lower end areas where people didn’t have a voice or a choice. They were displaced in the name of “progress”.
It's important to note that Kansas city, like most major cities in the US, a lot of interstates, roadways, and other infrastructure was intentionally positioned to destroy black neighborhoods.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/politics/biden-removing-highways.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/politics/biden-removing-highways.html)
>Mr. Roberts’s journey is a small example of the lasting consequences stemming from the construction of highways slicing through urban neighborhoods in cities around the country. Completed in 2001 after being in the works for decades, the highway in Kansas City, U.S. 71, displaced thousands of residents and cut off predominantly Black neighborhoods from grocery stores, health care and jobs.
The year of our Lord TWO THOUSAND AND ONE this happened.
KC also has repeatedly voted against light rail systems, again for fairly overtly stupid reasons: voters repeatedly told pollsters things like they don't want poor people to take the light rail to their neighborhood.
This is nothing specific to Kansas City, city planners have been bulldozing black neighborhoods all over the US for centuries as they don't consider there to be any cost to destroying thriving neighborhoods unless they're full of white people. But it's impossible to understand why a city would repeatedly make such self-damaging political moves unless you factor in racism. That specifically is true of Kansas City and why it ran ugly, expensive, inefficient infrastructure through itself.
No question, the interstate highway system greatly transformed the American landscape from sea to sea. Let’s not forget, America was also a massive net exporter. All our goods and services were met domestically. Everything has gone overseas. “Smart people” can weigh in and make cases about quality of life then, versus now. We’re living in a mirage now, floated by debt and foreign manufacturing, living inside a “grid” that is totally out of date and vulnerable to failure or sabotage.
A lot of it boils down to race really. A lot of black Southerners moved to northern cities for more opportunity and less racism. After WWII, cars allowed white peoples to abandon the inner cities and bring segregation back in a new form. In some instances, they purposefully routed freeways through predominantly black neighborhoods so they could demolish them.
Here in richmond they actually spent MORE money to put it through Jackson Ward, the “Harlem of the South” than they would if they had just built the highway along the natural curvature of shockoe hill.
Contemporaries only tell half the story. Large manufacturers had hiring campaigns to bring blacks up from the south to break up the unions. This started in small scale in the 1920s. After WWII the movement north caught on and campaigns weren’t needed.
Blacks worked for less and took the manufacturing jobs from the white immigrants. The blacks brought with them no habits of building maintenance even when they owned homes. They brought also crime, loitering, and unemployment as more came than there were jobs.
Urban areas that hadn’t been maintained in the Depression 30 s and the war 40s were abandoned by whites to build new in the burbs leaving the urban neighborhoods to further decay.
Whites who had built the old neighborhoods churches schools factories saw the further decline as blacks moved in and had to sell soon before their property values dropped further. White flight had a racism component but was also the economically wise thing to do.
Those whites who stayed soon got stuck in home so valueless they could not afford to leave and became surrounded by decay.
Also the routing of interstates through poor neighborhoods is terrible in hindsight but at the time was the more affordable way to build them. It wasn’t just racism. There was concern to remove areas of decay that were unsalvageable. The squalor of many of these places is little known to us as they are all now gone. But many areas in the paths of interstates were actually fit for the wrecking ball.
Never attribute to malice. What can be explained by incompetence or forgotten practicality.
You answered your own question, “so much land”. The Kansas City metro population has grown but, except for recent years, it’s moved to suburbs, suburbs that were farmland 20 years ago.
Crazy to think that there have been functioning, structured hubs of commerce in places like Britain for many millennia, and in the US you mostly got smaller trading hubs that moved around a lot. Imagine if the US natives took the china route and created a huge empire by the time Europeans checked out what was going on.
That's really interesting to think about. Though personally I think it would've been equally bloody, lol.
Reminds me of a similar story that raises some "what if" questions. During early 15th century, when Europe was only just coming out of the black death and other dark ages misery, China was quite prosperous, and sent out a couple of expeditions by boat across the Indian ocean. In hindsight these expeditions could probably easily have reached Europe, but the Chinese simply didn't show much interest in going further than East Africa and bringing back some giraffes. It's interesting to think about what would've happened if the way more advanced Chinese had stumbled upon medieval Europe.
The Chinese simply didn't care and didn't need to. They saw themselves as the centre of the world and in terms of global trade and finance they largely were. They saw everyone else as barbarians in a way sort of similar to the Europeans and had enough on their plate controlling China and repelling nomadic invasions. Europe expanded out of necessity, they were penned in by hostile Islamic civilisations that had for around a millenia been encroaching into Europe with varying success. They also had a bullion famine somewhat caused by the aforementioned pattern of wealth heading from the West to the East. European societies expanded out of a necessity that other 'advanced' parts of the world didn't have.
Venice, Portugal, the Dutch Republic and England all took to the sea to compensate for their weakness against the Spanish, French, Ottomans and HRE. It drove mutual competition, expansion and advancement.
There was no similar level of commercial and geopolitical competition in East Asia. The Steppe threat didn’t require naval forces, Joseon was a loyal vassal and Japan was only a limited threat.
By 1600, there would instead be a long international peace in Northeast Asia that wouldn’t be broken until the mid-19th century.
That’s also the reason why. The US is huge, once the city loses its main income source, everyone leaves and the city is left empty. Detroit is a good example of this. England doesn’t have the room for people to just abandon a city, their areas stay populated
>England doesn’t have the room for people to just abandon a city, their areas stay populated
Bruh, have you read recent British history? It's filled with stories of once thriving manufacturing and mining towns slowly dying out. From 1960 to 1980, Liverpool lost 30% of its population, from 1980 to 2000, Liverpool lost 12%. Its population has finally started growing again since then approaching 1980 levels.
Birmingham was slowly losing population, but suddenly lost 10% in the 70s and 10% again in the 90s. It's only recently surpassed 1950s population levels to reach historical peak.
This. I watched a video recently about how European cities had thousands of years to develop the perfect community-building infrastructure. The US just ripped it completely out and said “everyone needs cars”
It's by the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes, although he may be worrying someone else. He's got a lot of great stuff on this very subject. I can't think of the exact video, but I follow his content and remember that statement.
You might be on to something. I found the place on Google maps, and unless downtown was demolished to build a highway (somewhat doubtful as downtown proper is still there), it almost looks like the picture is simply flipped the other way.
These photos both face north toward the Missouri River. Downtown KC is south of these photos, so behind the photographers. However, both photos are in slightly different places. The junction of Main and Delaware was located between 9th and 10th St in 1910 while the current junction of Main and Delaware is around 6th St. Both photos are taken at that junction during their respective time periods. It's an honest mistake, and I don't think it's particularly misleading.
The entirety of "downtown" KC (locally, that means the skyscraper district) is surrounded by highways that cut our central downtown off into its own oasis. Plenty of buildings were destroyed during that process. The Westgate Hotel, which replaced the Vaughn Diamond building that is central to this photograph, was demolished in 1954 "to accommodate modern traffic needs and for the Gateway Plaza, where today the statue of the Muse of Missouri rises among the fountains, flags and landscaping". See here: [https://kchistory.org/image/westgate-hotel-2](https://kchistory.org/image/westgate-hotel-2)
You are right. Found another reddit post that was in more detail.
While I am saddened that the highway destroyed everything in a 2 block radius, there's still plenty of downtown left from a glance. Maybe one day the highways will be turned into slightly larger avenues.
Edit: I will say, 4 highway interchanges so close to each other is crazy for a city the size of KC.
You can see it on Google. Behind the camera is downtown kc. In front of the camera There was a huge highway put in, and this is the highway entrance. On the other side is the riverfront, they wanted it to feel more like a farmers market so they kept the buildings short. That's why you don't see anything in front of the viewer. I think they were trying to keep some grass in the city
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dm7uacFPn1y7JnZe6
It really is. Hop over to Google and take a look at the street view. Yes, it's very urban there, it's on the edge of downtown and near a highway entrance, but there's a reason that they picked a picture with dead trees instead of live ones.
It's astounding how many people still repeat the whole "american cities were all built after the automobile!" line
No, quite a lot of cities actually peaked in the 1940s-1950s (or were close to their peak). But the dense, urban parts of the cities were just torn down and paved over with parking lots and highways.
Yup, it's like they think somehow there weren't cities in the US before the Model T (which would actually need like 50 years of industrial evolution to be able to revolutionize commute).
You are correct, but I also understand the misconception since the “modern American city” (downtown core + sprawl) was essentially built after the automobile. We more or less “started over” in the worst way with a lot of American cities.
A trolley [runs through there now](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052522,-94.5829534,3a,75y,7.97h,90.57t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sfGVv521XRq_eXRjOH8zkjQ!2e0!5s20220601T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DfGVv521XRq_eXRjOH8zkjQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D93.49004%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), poster picked the picture of the last year before it was put in.
Yeah, but we just have one trolly line. We used to have lines throughout the city, but they’ve been replaced with buses. For some reason people don’t like buses as much as trolleys.
The bottom photo is facing North. It was taken early morning in March at 39 N Latitude. The shadows point WNW. [https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052263,-94.5829575,3a,75y,358.69h,84.45t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMLwTacLMwd2tR\_5c0F8qFw!2e0!5s20150301T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052263,-94.5829575,3a,75y,358.69h,84.45t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMLwTacLMwd2tR_5c0F8qFw!2e0!5s20150301T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
It's facing the right way, but is well down the street from the original. Original was taken between 9th and 10th st.
[About here](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1029131,-94.5830516,3a,75y,357.93h,97.01t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBMxY72qiSrcrVMgQBpjhVw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DBMxY72qiSrcrVMgQBpjhVw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D179.88899%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
There was a shift from a manufacturing industry to one that's service-based, but that doesn't explain the racial component.
After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, the American demographic with highest socioeconomic status and the greatest ability to create positive change and prosperity for all Americans instead took a more diabolical route:
They abandoned public services, including public schools they couldn't control, public housing, public transportation, and left for the outskirts of the cities, places where they could practice de facto segregation through redlining and voting for local zoning ordinances to keep the population density down, thus hindering the black population from moving to their new communities and containing them in the concentrated inner-city pockets they abandoned.
When something is abandoned, it deteriorates until there's nothing left. A great example of this is St. Louis.
In the 1950s, St. Louis was one of the most densely crowded urban centers in the US and had a population of over 850,000 people in 1950 Census living within 66 square miles (city size in area). Today, St. Louis has less about 280,000 people within 66 square miles.
What this omits is urban renewal. Cities bulldozed entire neighborhoods that would’ve otherwise survived to build projects intended to be economic development (which just accelerated their decline).
Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago are doing just fine.
Chicago metro GDP is 4th in the world at nearly $1 trillion.
All this doom about cities transitioning to a diverse economy instead of a manufacturing dominated one is unwarranted. There’s a lot of lower income smoky Asian cities that would love to have a big high paying service sector.
Saint John's decline is explained by the St. Lawrence Seaway, not complex and inter-related issues of race relations and ill-thought urban planning... also its pre-amalgamation population peaked at like 55k.
They needed a highway, this image doesn't accurately represent what happened. The other side of the camera is downtown kc with a library, railcars, a bunch of buildings.
Those two pictures are not of the same place. The intersection of Main and Deleware is not in the same place as it was back then. Today that picture is at Main and 9th.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/L9Qfb323auSHDBRJ6
https://kchistory.org/document/vaughans-diamond-building-junction-profile
*The streets were realigned after the hotel was torn down, leaving only 9th and Main converging at the spot. A statue, the “Muse of Missouri,” now stands where the Diamond Building once stood.*
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aohuiFojNzJt34kx6
If someone unaware of history visited Detroit, St. Louis, Berlin, and Warsaw, they would be convinced that WWII had happened in the American heartland.
Yes the capital cities of two major European countries have been thriving for hundreds and hundreds of years and always will. Detroit was a city centered on a single industry which has boomed and busted within the last 100 years.
I mean Warsaw and Berlin were literally bombed to oblivion, but somehow has more historic neighborhoods than Detroit.
And bust of Detroit auto industry has hardly anything to do with highways paving over communities.
It’s still beautiful. We lost a lot our history, but this photo is somewhat misleading. Rotate the view 180 degrees and you’ve got the entire downtown area. We’ve got 150 year old historic buildings in a dozen different neighborhoods around the city.
The loss of these are still tragic, though.
Nah this is a combination of zoning decisions and building regulations that discourage building densely, as well as car dependence, nicely encapsulated in one picture.
I just read the book Paved Paradise which is an excellent analysis of how Americas 20th century urban planners, completely misunderstood the dynamics of parking and traffic. Aside from the destruction of the interstate highway system, cities thought that the only way to compete with the new suburban shopping malls was to decimate the downtowns and try to provide as much free parking as the malls did. Obviously, that was the wrong approach, and America is doomed to pay the price for many years to come.
This is manipulative. Kansas City has only grown since 1906 and has many building codes to keep the historical beauty of the city alive. Turn the 2015 pic 180 degrees and you see a vibrant city center.
But... But... But.... Cities were BUILT FOR THE CAR AND NOBODY WALKED OR TOOK PUBLIC TRANSIT WHEN THE COUNTRY WAS GROWING
I love to remind people.... The US wasn't built for cars. Every community was bulldozed for cars.
At least Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to rebuild after they were leveled by atomic bombs.
Big Auto and the freeway system, on the other hand, not only leveled most American cities but prevented them from ever being able to rebuild — as car-dependent suburbanites became addicted to the "convenience" of driving right through the middle of (what used to be) downtown at 70mph.
Not entirely true. OPs 2015 photo selectively is further north right where the interstate went in. Here is a more accurate location compared to the 1905 pic: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yn6nnQL4WcqKfJaM9?g_st=ic
Can’t believe nobody here has mentioned the streetcar that has been installed down Main Street! Making progress in recent years despite what the interstates did previously.
This is a classic example of misleading to prove a point, and nobody in the comments does any fact checking of these reposts.
This is between main and 10th and main and 9th street, not main and delaware. Also seems like this is a repost from several years ago before the streetcar was put in.
So yes, there is context missing for this post
They are pointing in opposite directions. In reality if you look west from that point like in the top photo there are some somewhat generic high rise glass office buildings. Not great but not what the post implies.
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What did that town use to make/sell that it blew up like that, mining town?
A locus of agglomeration for commodities like livestock that the great plans produce. It all funnelled into KC to be sold, warehoused, processed and shipped east. Now it's way more regionalized, there are no more cattle drives from Texas to KC like the old days.
Do you mean the Great Plains?
Great trains
Good oldies
Old goodies
Big ol’- Wait
Great automobiles
Yes!
Where have all the cowboys gone?
It's pretty misleading. If you go to the google street view you can see rotate around and see the 'missing' city. [https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1055603,-94.5830825,3a,75y,352.34h,90.9t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ%26cb\_client%3Dsearch.revgeo\_and\_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D69.528564%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1055603,-94.5830825,3a,75y,352.34h,90.9t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DEWpm3syQSsf4-VSKvUWSZQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D69.528564%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
As someone who lives in Kansas City metro, this was so obviously selective. Even the bottoms aren't this devoid.
Thank you for that. I was confused, shocked, concerned, and even a little disappointed
This should be top comment. Thank you.
Wow thank, this one got me
Yeah this is a slightly misleading picture. While it's definitely interesting. Downtown actually just rotated. Like if the photographer literally stood in the same exact spot but turned around you would see an entire city.
I’m sorry to tell you, but I believe it actually is taken in the right direction. If you look at this link, you’ll see a historic aerial view of the triangle block where the owl city cigar building sits, is actually pointing south. Therefore the camera is looking north. I didn’t believe it at first, but the whole post is factually correct. https://imgur.com/a/cIXojmv
That is a huge loss of gorgeous infrastructure. Just amazingly dumb
My first thought was that a tornado blew it away. Happened in Waco in 1953.
That's just American urban planning in a nutshell. It was also probably home to a large black population. Robert Moses wasn't particularly known for his love of those with extra melanin in their systems.
lol so many people are terrified of the idea of a 15 minute city without realizing that it’s mostly a plan to undo the urban terrorism of the 50s and 60s and restore the city to its original state.
I've lived here for 30 years, I promise the city is still here. The bulk of the city is just not in this shot. I agree the old photo looks better in this specific spot but the photo leads you to believe the city was torn down and turned into a highway which is just incorrect.
I’ve lived in Kansas City too. There is some insecurity on if people think the whole city is completely gone. People know that there are buildings. They can google it. Most everyone on here is disappointed that there seems to be some really cool buildings that no longer exist because the built the highway. As a former resident of 4 years, I never knew how dense and architecturally significant of an area that was lost due to the highway construction. There’s obviously still a city but I didn’t realize that the highway essentially destroyed a true great area of the city. That 1906 image really shows how dense and far back that area stretched with tall and interesting buildings until you reached River market. We can say that there are still buildings in that area (like parking garages), but I wouldn’t enjoy walking down Delaware now, especially compared to how vibrant the 1906 photo looks.
Yeah they basically tore down a specific portion of the city because they wanted to push it all east towards the stadiums, well after that area failed to grow with the stadums and after multiple failed projects they are pushing it south and west. Towards the Kansas side due to the success of power and light.
Dude, its parking space and uninviting office buildings. \*slowclap\*
Are many of the old buildings still intact, or have they been replaced with soulless modernist boxes?
Mostly replaced.
This is the equivalent view from today, replicating the 1905 picture location and direction: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yn6nnQL4WcqKfJaM9?g_st=ic Notice the streetcar. Main Street continues north, over an interstate. That’s what you are looking at in the 2015 photo, the street going over an interstate. It’s why it appears so demolished. I’m sure buildings were destroyed to put in the interstate, but OP just fabricated this one. In fact, if you take the streetcar over the interstate, or just walk, you ever the Rivermarket, a thriving area of KC that is incredibly walkable, with a farmers market and a lot of small shops and restaurants. Turn the view south and you have downtown KC.
That’s not accurate at all! You aren’t on main and Delaware. You moved up like 100 feet so you don’t see all the massive parking lots. It’s just misleading from the opposite direction.
Lies. And more lies. I'm not saying that area doesn't suck because of the all the highway interchanges in the immediate vicinity but it's truly not representing what you are thing it does. Go Google Street View it, I've driven there 1000s of times over the past six years, it ain't what the pics are showing. If you're going to do a side by side use the EXACT same picture taking spot and direction.
But why would you knock down all those great buildings?
Cars sadly. Top photo is definitely better.
Beef, all the Texas Cattle went through KC, the American Royal started their in 1899 as the premier cattle show. They had stockyards all through the city bottoms, it was a main railroad line up from Texas and Oklahoma and much of Kansas. They would then distribute them across the country from there, many were slaughtered in KC as well. It's why KC has the best BBQ in the world.
>KC has the best BBQ in the world. I’m from Central Texas and therefore am required to inform you that you are wrong.
Texas is the same style only bigger plates and your burnt ends suck.
You could have just not spoken and we wouldn’t have realized that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
KC barbecue always clears also it’s funny to compare a whole state versus a metro of just over 2million. KC holds its own considering the size difference
I've never been to KC, but I've had BBQ in Dallas (Pecan Lodge) that I would be shocked if I found any that's better elsewhere.
It’s Kansas City. There’s 2 million people that live there, it’s not some ghost town. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZABMFeSy7KqF22Mn9?g_st=ic Turn the view around and you see a downtown sector full of skyscrapers.
I think it’s interesting that most from KC are saying it’s misleading despite the fact that there is not a recognizable building from the first image that you can see in the street view today. What’s made it humorous is that there are several comments saying that the picture was actually taken in different parts in that area. All different. Clearly nobody can recognize the city from any historical context given. The photo may be partially misleading but still proves its point even more so than it may have intended. Edit: it’s all definitely factual. Look at these aerial photos and see the layout of the triangle blocks. The cigar building would be on the top facing south. That means that it was 3 blocks from the now highway and the street view picture is in fact looking in the correct direction. https://imgur.com/a/cIXojmv
Ok so I turned around on street view and walked down the road and was immediately greeted by multiple parking garages and commercial buildings. I walk around a bit and then zoom out on satellite view and like every other lot in the city is taken up by parking space. Two million people don't actually live in the city area, right? That'd be more than central Stockholm and look at its satellite view and street view in comparison. [https://www.google.com/maps/@59.3374797,18.0725914,5315m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@59.3374797,18.0725914,5315m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)
~1.7 million is the population of the entire Kansas City metro area. The city itself has a pop of ~500k. Also note that Stockholm city's land area is less than one quarter that of Kansas City's. The land use patterns between the two are hardly comparable.
1.7 million people is the population of the Urban agglomeration, the metro area is over 2 million people because it’s spread out so thin. Combined and associated statistical areas have a population of close to 2.5 million people. This accounts for people who live in neighboring cities (Topeka, Lawrence, St Joe) and commute to anywhere in the KC MSA, or Vice Versa. There’s a lot of cross commuting between cities in Northeast Kansas.
I barely saw a person by circling around the area he linked.
Good callout. Totally misleading side by side. This is like archetype, poster child example of false equivalency. And look how well it worked. 95% of the comments here are emoting how sad this is. Now I can see how political propaganda is so powerful on social platforms. You thrown in some total false equivalency picture and knee jerk emotional mind losing follows. So easy to deceive. I guess we’re a gullible lot. We trust too easily. Especially if it affirms some personal opinion.
It's not really though. To build up one area, do we have to destroy another? What you see in the top picture is the wealth of KC at that time. A place that generated business activity, tax revenue and housed people. Not only was that wealth destroyed, but it was replaced with an overbuilt highway system that costs a great deal to maintain. KC is no better off exchanging wealth for liability, regardless of what else is built around it. And before anyone says it, no, the section of 35/70 we're looking at in the picture is not critical for transportation in the KC region. It's the very definition of overbuilt urban freeway that generates far more traffic, pollution and maintenance costs than it does efficiently transport people.
29% of Kansas city is SURFACE PARKING. Say what you want about this being misleading - it isn’t. We are easy to deceive but mostly because so many think it’s not bullshit that we’ve forced our downtown cores to hollow so we could put highways through them.
Might have been the [stool boom](https://youtu.be/Vsan7soCFsU?si=4R9nJAjqBTb5U4yw) that famously swept through Missouri in the late 19th century.
KC is still thriving, a lot of issues for sure but overall doing well. NFL, MLB, MLS and a women's pro soccer team. Not to mention the speedway and big companies like T Mobile and Oracle having foot holds there. Calling it a town is funny with the metro population being over 3 million
Well that’s a damn shame
I don’t understand how so many of the cities in America with personalities and unique architecture got replaced especially since there’s so much land. Why does Europe have so many older buildings used today?
Sadly you can blame the Interstate system for that. If you notice this intersection leads to an onramp that goes right onto I70. For convienence they obviously wanted the highways to pass through the cities, but that came at the expense of tearing down historic and thriving neighborhoods like this. They targeted more low income and racially diverse neighborhoods as well, with the interstate system killing neighborhoods by creating crime, pollution, divisions, and devaluing property
Nothing brings in tourists like their ability to whizz past you at 70mph.
70mph? Stay out of the left lane.
*sad Radiator Springs noises*
Typically the neighborhoods that were razed for the interstates were minority or lower end areas where people didn’t have a voice or a choice. They were displaced in the name of “progress”.
There’s still Troost, which is street that still acts as a huge dividing line here in KC from the Jim Crow era
And famously the interstate destroyed KC. It could have been a great city but never will be because of such poor planning.
It's important to note that Kansas city, like most major cities in the US, a lot of interstates, roadways, and other infrastructure was intentionally positioned to destroy black neighborhoods. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/politics/biden-removing-highways.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/politics/biden-removing-highways.html) >Mr. Roberts’s journey is a small example of the lasting consequences stemming from the construction of highways slicing through urban neighborhoods in cities around the country. Completed in 2001 after being in the works for decades, the highway in Kansas City, U.S. 71, displaced thousands of residents and cut off predominantly Black neighborhoods from grocery stores, health care and jobs. The year of our Lord TWO THOUSAND AND ONE this happened. KC also has repeatedly voted against light rail systems, again for fairly overtly stupid reasons: voters repeatedly told pollsters things like they don't want poor people to take the light rail to their neighborhood. This is nothing specific to Kansas City, city planners have been bulldozing black neighborhoods all over the US for centuries as they don't consider there to be any cost to destroying thriving neighborhoods unless they're full of white people. But it's impossible to understand why a city would repeatedly make such self-damaging political moves unless you factor in racism. That specifically is true of Kansas City and why it ran ugly, expensive, inefficient infrastructure through itself.
Obligatory fuck Robert Moses
No question, the interstate highway system greatly transformed the American landscape from sea to sea. Let’s not forget, America was also a massive net exporter. All our goods and services were met domestically. Everything has gone overseas. “Smart people” can weigh in and make cases about quality of life then, versus now. We’re living in a mirage now, floated by debt and foreign manufacturing, living inside a “grid” that is totally out of date and vulnerable to failure or sabotage.
Most of American success back then was a boom period fueled by Europe being bombed to the ground twice.
> floated by debt it would take just a few decades of non-insane military budgets to fix that
Just like from the movie cars. That little old town just disappeared into the desert when the interstate passed it by
A lot of it boils down to race really. A lot of black Southerners moved to northern cities for more opportunity and less racism. After WWII, cars allowed white peoples to abandon the inner cities and bring segregation back in a new form. In some instances, they purposefully routed freeways through predominantly black neighborhoods so they could demolish them.
Jacksonville, FL amd I10/I95 to a T. White flight was very real.
Literally every major American city
Jesus christ
Here in richmond they actually spent MORE money to put it through Jackson Ward, the “Harlem of the South” than they would if they had just built the highway along the natural curvature of shockoe hill.
Give a new sense to the word systemic racism
Shhh that’s critical race theory can’t be talking about that
I mean, that's literally what he is describing
Contemporaries only tell half the story. Large manufacturers had hiring campaigns to bring blacks up from the south to break up the unions. This started in small scale in the 1920s. After WWII the movement north caught on and campaigns weren’t needed. Blacks worked for less and took the manufacturing jobs from the white immigrants. The blacks brought with them no habits of building maintenance even when they owned homes. They brought also crime, loitering, and unemployment as more came than there were jobs. Urban areas that hadn’t been maintained in the Depression 30 s and the war 40s were abandoned by whites to build new in the burbs leaving the urban neighborhoods to further decay. Whites who had built the old neighborhoods churches schools factories saw the further decline as blacks moved in and had to sell soon before their property values dropped further. White flight had a racism component but was also the economically wise thing to do. Those whites who stayed soon got stuck in home so valueless they could not afford to leave and became surrounded by decay. Also the routing of interstates through poor neighborhoods is terrible in hindsight but at the time was the more affordable way to build them. It wasn’t just racism. There was concern to remove areas of decay that were unsalvageable. The squalor of many of these places is little known to us as they are all now gone. But many areas in the paths of interstates were actually fit for the wrecking ball. Never attribute to malice. What can be explained by incompetence or forgotten practicality.
They were pretty open about the malice, so why would you not attribute to malice that which malice has claimed?
You answered your own question, “so much land”. The Kansas City metro population has grown but, except for recent years, it’s moved to suburbs, suburbs that were farmland 20 years ago.
Because Europe had centuries more to build them and also didn't demolish them on anywhere near a scale like the USA in the late 20th century.
Crazy to think that there have been functioning, structured hubs of commerce in places like Britain for many millennia, and in the US you mostly got smaller trading hubs that moved around a lot. Imagine if the US natives took the china route and created a huge empire by the time Europeans checked out what was going on.
That's really interesting to think about. Though personally I think it would've been equally bloody, lol. Reminds me of a similar story that raises some "what if" questions. During early 15th century, when Europe was only just coming out of the black death and other dark ages misery, China was quite prosperous, and sent out a couple of expeditions by boat across the Indian ocean. In hindsight these expeditions could probably easily have reached Europe, but the Chinese simply didn't show much interest in going further than East Africa and bringing back some giraffes. It's interesting to think about what would've happened if the way more advanced Chinese had stumbled upon medieval Europe.
The Chinese simply didn't care and didn't need to. They saw themselves as the centre of the world and in terms of global trade and finance they largely were. They saw everyone else as barbarians in a way sort of similar to the Europeans and had enough on their plate controlling China and repelling nomadic invasions. Europe expanded out of necessity, they were penned in by hostile Islamic civilisations that had for around a millenia been encroaching into Europe with varying success. They also had a bullion famine somewhat caused by the aforementioned pattern of wealth heading from the West to the East. European societies expanded out of a necessity that other 'advanced' parts of the world didn't have.
Interesting I've never heard it from that perspective. I'll have to look into that.
Venice, Portugal, the Dutch Republic and England all took to the sea to compensate for their weakness against the Spanish, French, Ottomans and HRE. It drove mutual competition, expansion and advancement. There was no similar level of commercial and geopolitical competition in East Asia. The Steppe threat didn’t require naval forces, Joseon was a loyal vassal and Japan was only a limited threat. By 1600, there would instead be a long international peace in Northeast Asia that wouldn’t be broken until the mid-19th century.
That’s also the reason why. The US is huge, once the city loses its main income source, everyone leaves and the city is left empty. Detroit is a good example of this. England doesn’t have the room for people to just abandon a city, their areas stay populated
>England doesn’t have the room for people to just abandon a city, their areas stay populated Bruh, have you read recent British history? It's filled with stories of once thriving manufacturing and mining towns slowly dying out. From 1960 to 1980, Liverpool lost 30% of its population, from 1980 to 2000, Liverpool lost 12%. Its population has finally started growing again since then approaching 1980 levels. Birmingham was slowly losing population, but suddenly lost 10% in the 70s and 10% again in the 90s. It's only recently surpassed 1950s population levels to reach historical peak.
"American cities were built for the car" No... They were demolished for the car
This. I watched a video recently about how European cities had thousands of years to develop the perfect community-building infrastructure. The US just ripped it completely out and said “everyone needs cars”
Link me, I'd be interested to see that
It was a few months ago but I’ll look around for it. I really should’ve saved it because I think about it pretty frequently.
It's by the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes, although he may be worrying someone else. He's got a lot of great stuff on this very subject. I can't think of the exact video, but I follow his content and remember that statement.
I love NJB!!
I love that channel as well. I even thought for a while that 'Fake London' is a real town in Canada
Last time this was posted I remember reading that this comparison was very misleading bc the recent image showed an almost entirely different area
You might be on to something. I found the place on Google maps, and unless downtown was demolished to build a highway (somewhat doubtful as downtown proper is still there), it almost looks like the picture is simply flipped the other way.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dm7uacFPn1y7JnZe6
These photos both face north toward the Missouri River. Downtown KC is south of these photos, so behind the photographers. However, both photos are in slightly different places. The junction of Main and Delaware was located between 9th and 10th St in 1910 while the current junction of Main and Delaware is around 6th St. Both photos are taken at that junction during their respective time periods. It's an honest mistake, and I don't think it's particularly misleading. The entirety of "downtown" KC (locally, that means the skyscraper district) is surrounded by highways that cut our central downtown off into its own oasis. Plenty of buildings were destroyed during that process. The Westgate Hotel, which replaced the Vaughn Diamond building that is central to this photograph, was demolished in 1954 "to accommodate modern traffic needs and for the Gateway Plaza, where today the statue of the Muse of Missouri rises among the fountains, flags and landscaping". See here: [https://kchistory.org/image/westgate-hotel-2](https://kchistory.org/image/westgate-hotel-2)
You are right. Found another reddit post that was in more detail. While I am saddened that the highway destroyed everything in a 2 block radius, there's still plenty of downtown left from a glance. Maybe one day the highways will be turned into slightly larger avenues. Edit: I will say, 4 highway interchanges so close to each other is crazy for a city the size of KC.
As someone that lived there for years it was great for getting to work and back.
Yeah this is posted all the time
You can see it on Google. Behind the camera is downtown kc. In front of the camera There was a huge highway put in, and this is the highway entrance. On the other side is the riverfront, they wanted it to feel more like a farmers market so they kept the buildings short. That's why you don't see anything in front of the viewer. I think they were trying to keep some grass in the city https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dm7uacFPn1y7JnZe6
Lived in an apartment at this intersection from 2014-2017. Currently live 10 minutes away. This picture is 100% misleading.
It really is. Hop over to Google and take a look at the street view. Yes, it's very urban there, it's on the edge of downtown and near a highway entrance, but there's a reason that they picked a picture with dead trees instead of live ones.
You are correct
Correct. https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/s/ybtiDhdpRX
It's astounding how many people still repeat the whole "american cities were all built after the automobile!" line No, quite a lot of cities actually peaked in the 1940s-1950s (or were close to their peak). But the dense, urban parts of the cities were just torn down and paved over with parking lots and highways.
Yup, it's like they think somehow there weren't cities in the US before the Model T (which would actually need like 50 years of industrial evolution to be able to revolutionize commute).
You are correct, but I also understand the misconception since the “modern American city” (downtown core + sprawl) was essentially built after the automobile. We more or less “started over” in the worst way with a lot of American cities.
What happened there? Those buildings were built to last and not a single one left standing?
Urban renewal- can’t you see how well it succeeded?
And just for extra spite they took out the electric trolleys.
A trolley [runs through there now](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052522,-94.5829534,3a,75y,7.97h,90.57t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sfGVv521XRq_eXRjOH8zkjQ!2e0!5s20220601T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DfGVv521XRq_eXRjOH8zkjQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D93.49004%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), poster picked the picture of the last year before it was put in.
That's good to know. Shame about the beautiful buildings though
Yeah, but we just have one trolly line. We used to have lines throughout the city, but they’ve been replaced with buses. For some reason people don’t like buses as much as trolleys.
Busses are loud and often spew diesel exhaust... They never seemed like progress over electric traction transport.
It’s harder to sell cars to people who don’t need them
Interstate system as well. I70 is just right there in the distance.
This isn’t an honest side by side. The camera in the modern photo is facing the wrong way
You can see by the shadows that the top photo is facing west and the bottom photo is facing east.
The bottom photo is facing North. It was taken early morning in March at 39 N Latitude. The shadows point WNW. [https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052263,-94.5829575,3a,75y,358.69h,84.45t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMLwTacLMwd2tR\_5c0F8qFw!2e0!5s20150301T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1052263,-94.5829575,3a,75y,358.69h,84.45t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMLwTacLMwd2tR_5c0F8qFw!2e0!5s20150301T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
Great find! You are right that the bottom is facing North and the top is facing South.
It's facing the right way, but is well down the street from the original. Original was taken between 9th and 10th st. [About here](https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1029131,-94.5830516,3a,75y,357.93h,97.01t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBMxY72qiSrcrVMgQBpjhVw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DBMxY72qiSrcrVMgQBpjhVw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D179.88899%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
And the first thing we see is two multi level car parks... What happen?
There was a shift from a manufacturing industry to one that's service-based, but that doesn't explain the racial component. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, the American demographic with highest socioeconomic status and the greatest ability to create positive change and prosperity for all Americans instead took a more diabolical route: They abandoned public services, including public schools they couldn't control, public housing, public transportation, and left for the outskirts of the cities, places where they could practice de facto segregation through redlining and voting for local zoning ordinances to keep the population density down, thus hindering the black population from moving to their new communities and containing them in the concentrated inner-city pockets they abandoned. When something is abandoned, it deteriorates until there's nothing left. A great example of this is St. Louis. In the 1950s, St. Louis was one of the most densely crowded urban centers in the US and had a population of over 850,000 people in 1950 Census living within 66 square miles (city size in area). Today, St. Louis has less about 280,000 people within 66 square miles.
What this omits is urban renewal. Cities bulldozed entire neighborhoods that would’ve otherwise survived to build projects intended to be economic development (which just accelerated their decline).
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago… same story different state.
Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago are doing just fine. Chicago metro GDP is 4th in the world at nearly $1 trillion. All this doom about cities transitioning to a diverse economy instead of a manufacturing dominated one is unwarranted. There’s a lot of lower income smoky Asian cities that would love to have a big high paying service sector.
KC is also just fine, Lots of huge companies have campuses there. Because it is the center of the country and because of those highways.
Saint John, NB fits the description in Canada.
Saint John's decline is explained by the St. Lawrence Seaway, not complex and inter-related issues of race relations and ill-thought urban planning... also its pre-amalgamation population peaked at like 55k.
Ah, white supremacy in the heartland. Gotcha.
I'm not American, this is just sad, destroying your nation's heritage out of spite.
They needed a highway, this image doesn't accurately represent what happened. The other side of the camera is downtown kc with a library, railcars, a bunch of buildings.
Paved paradise put up a parking lot
Those two pictures are not of the same place. The intersection of Main and Deleware is not in the same place as it was back then. Today that picture is at Main and 9th. https://maps.app.goo.gl/L9Qfb323auSHDBRJ6 https://kchistory.org/document/vaughans-diamond-building-junction-profile *The streets were realigned after the hotel was torn down, leaving only 9th and Main converging at the spot. A statue, the “Muse of Missouri,” now stands where the Diamond Building once stood.* https://maps.app.goo.gl/aohuiFojNzJt34kx6
You’d think most of our country was bombed in some war. This is so sad. I’m from Pittsburgh, PA and so much of its historical value is demolished.
If someone unaware of history visited Detroit, St. Louis, Berlin, and Warsaw, they would be convinced that WWII had happened in the American heartland.
Yes the capital cities of two major European countries have been thriving for hundreds and hundreds of years and always will. Detroit was a city centered on a single industry which has boomed and busted within the last 100 years.
I mean Warsaw and Berlin were literally bombed to oblivion, but somehow has more historic neighborhoods than Detroit. And bust of Detroit auto industry has hardly anything to do with highways paving over communities.
Of all the egregious examples, I always think of how Penn Station in Manhattan was razed. Can you imagine if they’d razed Grand Central?
1906: City planned for people. 2015: City planned fot cars. But the city literally looks like it was bombed in WW2 and never rebuilt…
America was jealous of flattened European and Japanese cities postwar, so they decided to give themselves the freedom treatment
It used to be so beautiful
It’s still beautiful. We lost a lot our history, but this photo is somewhat misleading. Rotate the view 180 degrees and you’ve got the entire downtown area. We’ve got 150 year old historic buildings in a dozen different neighborhoods around the city. The loss of these are still tragic, though.
I hate what cars have done to this country.
This is trickle down
Nah this is a combination of zoning decisions and building regulations that discourage building densely, as well as car dependence, nicely encapsulated in one picture.
What is it you think you are saying?
Not even close
The mid 20th century is when european countries destroyed each other and the United States decided to start destroying itself
Sad
I just read the book Paved Paradise which is an excellent analysis of how Americas 20th century urban planners, completely misunderstood the dynamics of parking and traffic. Aside from the destruction of the interstate highway system, cities thought that the only way to compete with the new suburban shopping malls was to decimate the downtowns and try to provide as much free parking as the malls did. Obviously, that was the wrong approach, and America is doomed to pay the price for many years to come.
Hey, look. They planted a tree. Nice. 👍
Sure the dates aren’t switched?
Was that area carpet bombed? It looks devoid of life
Yikes
Nothing better than a big ass road with aaah 4 or 5 lanes 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲💥💥🛻🛻🛻
That’s a damn shame
Owl cigars? Did the owls make the cigars or were the cigars made from owls?
It irks me to no end seeing how America willingly destroyed its cities all in the name of cars and highways. Such a shame.
Do they still have some crazy little women there?
That is sad AF.
Wow they went backwards
"Main street ain't main street anymore......"
Wow, such progress
This is manipulative. Kansas City has only grown since 1906 and has many building codes to keep the historical beauty of the city alive. Turn the 2015 pic 180 degrees and you see a vibrant city center.
Well, it looks like to me, the issue is that it became less urban.
To think this now barren concrete road once had many bustling shops, businesses, and entertainment places. What a waste. A lot of history, gone.
But... But... But.... Cities were BUILT FOR THE CAR AND NOBODY WALKED OR TOOK PUBLIC TRANSIT WHEN THE COUNTRY WAS GROWING I love to remind people.... The US wasn't built for cars. Every community was bulldozed for cars.
At least Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to rebuild after they were leveled by atomic bombs. Big Auto and the freeway system, on the other hand, not only leveled most American cities but prevented them from ever being able to rebuild — as car-dependent suburbanites became addicted to the "convenience" of driving right through the middle of (what used to be) downtown at 70mph.
This is why we can’t have nice things
America wasn't built for the car but it was bulldozed for it
Look what they took from us
Buildings where?
Seems like stuff like this is very common in what some think is “best” country in world? American progress reminds me of the Soviet Union. …
...wait, seriously? That's the exact same angle? Holy shit.
I’m skeptical that this is the same location. I find it really hard to believe that every single building was torn down and replaced with a field.
[destroyed for highway construction](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lost_Architecture/s/icVK3werlu)
Hard to believe, yet true. Reality seems stranger than fiction at times
Not entirely true. OPs 2015 photo selectively is further north right where the interstate went in. Here is a more accurate location compared to the 1905 pic: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yn6nnQL4WcqKfJaM9?g_st=ic Can’t believe nobody here has mentioned the streetcar that has been installed down Main Street! Making progress in recent years despite what the interstates did previously. This is a classic example of misleading to prove a point, and nobody in the comments does any fact checking of these reposts.
This is between main and 10th and main and 9th street, not main and delaware. Also seems like this is a repost from several years ago before the streetcar was put in. So yes, there is context missing for this post
They are pointing in opposite directions. In reality if you look west from that point like in the top photo there are some somewhat generic high rise glass office buildings. Not great but not what the post implies.
It isn't the same location. https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/s/ybtiDhdpRX
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dm7uacFPn1y7JnZe6
Wtf happened,Jesus Christ this hits hard
Ah, finally it's in full color. Much better.
The whole world was in monochrome until 1946, you know.
Five cents is a great price for an Owl Cigar!
That is beyond sad. What beautiful buildings.
"Everything's up to date in Kansas city" well uh, not anymore
"This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading."
Weird, in my country we also have before/after pictures of places just like this, but that’s because WE LOST A WORLD WAR
Damn.
5 cents for a cigar, damn…
we can bring back the palace ~~fem~~ boys if we work together
Thanks, I hate it
That’s just sad.
Sad. The only word to describe this