What you thought of urban renewal depended on what side of the street you saw it from.
Connecticut College recently completed grant-funded research focused on the 1962-1975 Winthrop Urban Renewal Project in our host city. This collaborative student-faculty-staff project resulted in a digital public history resource that uses StoryMaps with ArcGIS to present a narrative timeline of the midcentury redevelopment campaign, together with the largely contemporaneous project of interstate highway and bridge construction. A related edited volume is forthcoming from the New London County Historical Society in 2021. Together, the digital and print publications offer the first in-depth history of those transformative events.
Excerpt from: Anna Vallye, “‘Lost City’: Public Housing, Urban Renewal, and Community in New London, Connecticut – Part 1, Mapping Urban Renewal.” PLATFORM (Mar 1, 2021). NOTE: This is the first post in a two-part series. You can read the second post here.