Eight Mile Road, originally utilized as a surveying line in the 1700s, evolved into a phycological and physical barrier between the traditionally black city to the south off Eight Mile Road and the white suburbs to the north. Prior to World War II, the area around the road was mostly farmland, especially to the north, […]
Project Topics: Infrastructure
The Purple Gang: How Detroit Supplied Liquor to the United States During Prohibition
Detroit became one of the most important cities during the Prohibition because of the connections the Purple Gang had to Canada, and the mass amounts of alcohol that they were able to smuggle into the United States.
The Black Bottom, Slum Clearance, and Detroit’s Self-Destructive Desires
The Black Bottom Neighborhood Black Bottom was among the oldest neighborhoods in Detroit prior to its demolition. Although bearing a large immigrant and Jewish population by the turn of the 20th century, factors such as the Great Migration, new job opportunities, and redlining resulted in an explosion of Black Bottom’s African American population. Over the […]
Climate Change and its Effects on Chicago
Chicago has always had a very precarious relationship with its surrounding environment, and climate change will only make the effects on the city and its infrastructure more intense.
Construction Techniques and Demand: A Firestorm in the Making Chicago’s Great Conflagration of 1871
Today, Chicago stands as a beacon of industry, a center of transportation, and a hub of international finance. One of the most magical cities in the country, Chicago evolved from a desolate trading post of some thirty souls to a city of more than three hundred thousand in 1871. The city of Chicago literally grew […]
Boston Sewers in relation to disease
This blog will give a brief overview about the history of Boston, Massachusetts sewer systems. We will began with the first evidence of sewer in the 1700s and quickly move up to Boston’s current systems. In the 1700s many settlers including some of the first second-generation Americans occupied Boston. Only the elite of the city […]
Sewers and Urban Planning in Boston
Though private citizens and companies built the early sewers of Boston the infrastructure was changed and expanded in the late 1800s with the development of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission.
Filling Boston’s Back Bay
The most radical land-fill operation carried out in Boston was that of the Back Bay, which symbolized “Boston’s wealth and optimism in the late 1850’s and the pride and ambition of her civic leaders.”
Transportation and Development in 19th century Boston
From a seaport town to the premiere New England metropolis
The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority
In 1894, Boston was authorized to build the first subway system in the United States, a pivotal undertaking in terms of public transportation. [1] For over a century mass public transportation in Boston changed, shifting from the private, financially unstable Boston Elevated Railway Company to the modernized, publicly funded, popular, Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. This shift from […]
