The Slumming of West Norwood - Undone by Urban Renewal

It must’ve frustrated the city fathers of Norwood back in the 1960s that the street grid refused to line up - that those who originally subdivided and platted the city back in the nineteenth and early twentieth century neglected to plan for the widespread use of the automobile.

Montgomery Road, which is part of Ohio Route 3 - aka Ohio 3-C (Cincinnati-Columbus-Cleveland) - cuts across Norwood from the southwest to the northeast. At a slightly more severe angle, the Conrail tracks set their own bearing, also from southwest to northeast, leaving a pie shaped wedge that, ironically, hosts Surrey Square.

Adding further complication, a section line runs down Section Avenue. If you look closely you’ll find that the intersections don’t quite line up on either side of that road either (running down the middle of the map below, continuing as a dotted red line).

I’ve included the a portion of the USGS map because it shows a bit of the past, where an aerial photo is a snapshot in time. For example, it still shows the Conrail tracks, which are no longer there. Other additions and subtractions are shown in purple.

Urban renewal plans of the early 1960s added the purple connector between Smith and Sherman. Additional realignment “fixed” the intersection of Allison/Section and Sherman, near the high school. Today’s Sherman continues all the way across the run at the west edge of Norwood to Victory Parkway. It is a significant local arterial.

The original Sherman Avenue’s ragtag zigzag would’ve made it far less attractive for east-west traffic. In making it more efficient, the city fathers took traffic away from the intersection of Mills and Carter. This intersection was once anchored by a bank on the northwest, a general store on the southeast, more commercial enterprises on the northeast, and St. Elizabeth Church and School on the southwest, with the lumberyard only another block down Mills.

Only the buildings remember.

In recent history, this intersection was better known for crime and violence - the school building condemned, the parish church empty, the neglected police substation housed in the former bank. Lottery tickets and porn sales out of the remaining storefront on the northeast corner became the sum total of local, legitimate commercial enterprise. The rest had escaped to Surrey Square and, later, Rookwood Commons.

It is easy to see where new slums are spontaneously forming today, and how dull, dark and undiverse are the streets in which they typically form, because the process is happening now. What is harder to realize, because it lies in the past, is the fact that lack of lively urbanity has usually been an original characteristic of slums. “Unslumming and Slumming” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p274-5)

Again and again, Jacobs hits on the diversity of uses - the cross-use, 24-7 eyes on the street. Activity, safety. A police force thousands strong cannot replace this type of self-policing.

Improving the traffic flow was a valid goal, but it had consequences. Retail space is hard enough to fill. Take away the traffic, and it’s almost impossible.

I love this quote and will use it time and again:

[S]lum shifting fails because it tries to overcome the causes of trouble by diddling with symptoms. “Unslumming and Slumming” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p271)

“Blight” is a symptom. We pretend that blight begets blight - a spreading disease, a fungus, an inflammation.

The buildings remember, and provide new opportunities to diversify again: