Blog #2: Root Shock

This week's Root Shock chapters were very interesting. I liked learning about the history of the Avenue de L'Opera in France and how it connected to Roanoke, Virginia. However, I unfortunately have to agree with the author that while urban renewal can have it's positives, the program wasn't utilized in the way it was promised. In effect, many residents were left displaced with nowhere to go. I think the idea of urban renewal was very innovative, but the Commonwealth, Kimball, and Gainsboro projects were, as the author said, more devitilizing than revitalizing. The before and after pictures of the areas convey this problem devastatingly well: before urban renewal there were hundreds, even thousands, of homes all interconnected in the towns; after urban renewal many homes were torn down in favor of interstates and large, spread out corporations. There was no room left for the mostly poor, African American residents, causing them to be moved to new, less interconnected neighborhoods. The overarching effect in all of this is that many people lost their faith and trust in the government, having been duped three times by hollow promises.
On a more specific note, I felt I was finally able to understand the concept of "invisible city" through this reading. From what I gathered, the concept is about a government or government officials making promises to Community A for the better, but not telling Community A that the "bettering" is for Community B that they care about more. This connects to the pictures I took in my hometown because I felt many of the images I captured were of a forgotten promise and a forgotten community. I see distrust of the government in my hometown often, and it's just getting worse. In any community, it will continue to get worse until circumstances are actually changed for the better (and even then it may take a while). My point is that I understand this concept and some of the history behind the formation of "invisible cities."