Response to Lancaster walk

I've always liked Lancaster Ave. and the surrounding neighborhoods, and from this walk which took us further than I had previously been on foot, I saw so many examples of the unfulfilled potential the street has. The wonderful and varying architectural styles bring so much character to the area, but nearly none of them are well kempt. The vacant upstairs spaces and ugly storefronts really take away from the overall appeal of the street. With a little work and money the buildings could drastically improve. The challenge is to revitalize the neighborhood without taking away it's existant character and in a way the current residents agree with. Obviously gentrification isn't in the interest of the residents, but if it became a place where more students went to eat or spend money then it would benefit the neighborhood and the people who live there.

Urban Renewal reading response

When I first started reading, the description of urban renewal in Paris made me wonder what an urban renewal would be like in a modern American city, but after reading about it, I came to see Americans took a very different approach to the concept of urban renewal. Instead of making changes in the structure of the city to better it for the future of it's inhabitants like Paris, they disregarded the individuals and did what would be the most economically beneficial. Especially in the case of Roanoake, it's bewildering to me that no one could come up with a better solution to the cities problems than to demolish neighborhoods for the construction of strip malls.
The author states, "I thought it was probably a good idea that the United States hadn't gone to war just after urban renewal. Then I remembered Vietnam." She never elaborates on the suggested negatives of this. I'm supposing she means that with few options, many of the displaced poor ended up going to war, though I would have liked an elaboration.
The author writes the one of the options cities had when it came to making room for more people was the departure of whites from the city to the suburbs and the influx of poor African Americans into formally white neighborhoods.  From what I have noticed of Philadelphia, it seems as though a good bit of this may have happened here. The city is surrounded by affluent suburbs, and made up of many deteriorated neighborhoods with elegant architecture that seem to have gone downhill when the money left years before. The best example I can think of is some of the north Philly neighborhoods lining Fairmount park.