Going through the reading, one idea was stressed continually that I found to be quite interesting: the human aspect of the projects.
The developers of these various areas were quite good at building major centers and organizing large projects. Big highways, huge buildings – it makes sense that these projects would, at first glance, improve surrounding communities. Obviously, buying out residents and leaving them with little place to go is horrible, but the idea that these new communities would be nicer, with newly created low-income living areas for displaced people, is a very appealing one. So, where did it all go wrong?
Even more than failed promises to build new living places for most of the displaced persons, I think that the main problem was a failure to relate to these communities as people. People have relationships, sentiments and emotions that go beyond how wide their streets are. Community structure can be infinitely more important then civil engineering structure, and the failure to realize this is, I believe, the worst aspect of theses renewal projects. These project treated people like x’s and o’s on paper, are therein lies the biggest flaw of them.
Josh
