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Mapping out our ghost neighborhoods

A 3D rendering of past Hanford Village buildings overlaid on present-day Route 70. Courtesy of OSU Center for Urban and Regional Analysis What did Columbus look like before highway construction divided and destroyed neighborhoods across the city?An OSU research team is hard at work trying to piece them back together, business by business, home by home. Why it matters: The project can offer both insight on the past and a lesson for more responsible development practices as the . What they're doing: The university's Center for Urban and Regional Analysis is fusing modern technology with old-fashioned research methods to digitally recreate once-vibrant communities. Students use dating back to the 1800s to get an accurate sense of how each block was once laid out. Old photographs and land parcel data are helping to fill in any missing pieces. What they're saying: “Our ultimate goal would be to come up with 3D visualizations that are realistic enough to give people a visceral feeling of what those neighborhoods were like,” Harvey Miller, a geography professor and the project's director, .From the Aug. 26, 1956, edition of the Coshocton Democrat, via Newspapers.com State of play: The choices made by highway planners in the mid-20th century are still evident on today's map.Routes 70 and 71 were built directly over predominantly Black neighborhoods like and . In the latter case, the highway displaced residents, split the neighborhood in two and cut it off from downtown — the resulting economic ramifications are still felt today. Flytown, a melting pot community near the modern-day Arena District, was decimated by construction that forced its residents to relocate. Meanwhile, highway construction avoided white-majority neighborhoods such as Bexley. Separately, the research team hopes to map out Franklinton as it looked before . Worthy of your time: The Columbus Dispatch's 2020 feature "." Get more local stories in your inbox with .Subscribe Support local journalism by becoming a member.

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