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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Because other cities didn’t have a large black neighborhood to knock down.
TIL
RIP Seneca Village
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Village
To be somewhat fair, that represents a very small part of Central Park.
They used all those up for the Interstate system.
Yup, About 100 years later. What’s old is new again.
Yeah, Akron is particularly guilty here... The interbelt didn't even even up being a useful interstate.
This is yet another absolutely shameful example of government led evil, but Seneca Village was also a small portion of what makes up Central Park. We need not imply that demolishing a thriving black community was the sole goal of Central Park to acknowledge how fundamentally fucked up this place is.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Wouldn’t surprise me if they saw the black neighborhood and came up with reasons to justify getting rid of it, and the park that was created somehow justified the original intentions.
I’m certainly not sure. There’s no bounds to the depth of government endorsed racism in this country.
I only know that Seneca Village, in particular, was geographically a small portion of what makes up Central Park. A quick perusal of Wikipedia isn’t an all encompassing or definitive history but it appears that approximately 1600 residents in a number of different villages were evicted through eminent domain, while Seneca Village seems to have had ~250 residents at its peak.
As is often the case it seems like residents with the least power and wealth were steamrolled by government agencies for a “civic good,” but many sites were considered before this shameful act, so it hardly seems that the park was an invented purpose after the fact. Rather, these government agencies should be shamed for continuing to force the least powerful and wealthy of its citizens to pay for shared public goods.
Interesting. I might look for a documentary on this. I’m sure something is out there.
FYI tdot is slang for Toronto (sounds like you're american).
I’m aware. It’s actually a small reference to Kendrick Lamar’s early rap name which was k.dot . Can’t have punctuation in your name on lemmy, tho.
The large black neighborhoods were replaced by highways before cities could replace them with Central Park-esque projects
In fairness, they did try to obtain property that also had two wealthy families on twice (with injunctions that failed) before looking at the Central Park area that Seneca Village was also in.
Of course that doesn’t sound as much as a hot take that you gave.
Well, that's simply not true. While that may be how they found the land for Central Park, that's not the reason why other cities haven't made large parks like in NYC.
Portland, OR has (I think) the second biggest inner-city park in the country, and I'm fairly sure no minority neighborhoods were destroyed to create it. Way to be edgy though.
As for answering OP's question... I'm guessing the property is just too valuable as commercial and residential land for the city governments to want to redesignate as parks. Especially now with the housing crisis and all.
It's called a generalization. Way to be edgy though.