Twin Cities Streets for People

The images displayed below are of  7 Corners in St. Paul, but it might as well be Anywhere, USA. The last 47 years haven’t been kind to the district adjacent to downtown. In fact, it transformed from a neighborhood of small businesses, quaint houses and small apartment blocks into an open surface parking lot for a convention center.

This is 1957. Most of the historic street layout exists, but it’s starting to change.

This is 3 years later. Some buildings have been knocked down and surface parking lots are slowly starting to appear.

Fast forward nearly twenty years to 1979 and you can’t even recognize place.

And, now to 2004. The large open surface area in the middle of the image is a gravel lot. What 47 years prior was home to approximately 26 buildings is now a pile of gravel used nearly exclusively for parking cars during events that are held across the street.

This is the devolution of St. Paul’s urban environment via convenient automobile usage, poor urban planning, and the hope that a one large government-funded convention center and sporting arena might revitalize an area.

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Visit me @ Thoughts on the Urban Environment.