Discuss the effects of Urban Renewal in New York City. Katherine Brewster – AM245 New York City has never been slow to change to meet the ever-changing requirements of a bustling port city, for so long the gateway to America. Whether in its passing from the Dutch to the British or growth as an immigrant hub, New York City has hundreds of cultures represented in its fabled ‘Melting Pot.’ Arguably though, New York has faced its most drastic change in the urban renewal of the post-1945 period. The end of World War II left the USA as supreme superpower and caused the birth of the Atomic Age. America saw a massive economic boom during this period and rapid population growth due to the “Baby Boomers”, children born in the decade following the war. 89 Post war America was and still is widely remembered as a golden period in American culture, often called the ‘Great American Century’. 90 The same could not be said for its cities, however. New York City’s efforts to reshape itself for the new era ushered the city into a period of far reaching urban renewal, which displaced many New Yorkers, but ultimately succeeded in keeping the city relevant in an ever more suburban society. The post war period saw a battle between the old New York, the working city of the street that many saw as its beating heart, and the modern city built for commuters and cars. The city was to become unrecognizable from the image presented in Helen Levitt’s ‘In The Street’ (1948) which depicts the immigrant neighbourhood of Spanish Harlem 91 , just one community of many to be uprooted and changed 89 Robert A. Beauregard, When America Became Suburban, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) p. 11. 90 IBID, p. 11. 91 In The Streets, Helen Levitt, 1948.
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