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I'm not sure what golden age you think American cities had that compares favorably to today. If you're following my Pittsburgh series, one of the themes is that there are no golden ages. For all the problems American cities have these days, they don't compare to the problems they had in the first half of the 20th century, which you probably don't even think about because they have largely been solved. Have you ever smelled burning coal before? I have, and while it isn't entirely unpleasant when one house in a rural area is burning it, it's quite another when, say, everybody in Pittsburgh, or New York, or London is burning it all winter, not to mention railroad and industrial air pollution. Garbage collection wasn't the most efficient, and it was common for people to dump rubbish in alleys or over hillsides. Large portions of cities weren't paved until well into the 20th century, and the roads turned to mud whenever it rained, and dust when it didn't. It wasn't until midcentury that most cities had modern sewage treatment facilities and sewers, which were largely open at the beginning of the century, discharged into the nearest watercourse. Even into the 1950s, poorer sections of cities didn't have full plumbing facilities in every household. In some houses the only running water was in the basement. At the beginning of the century, there was often a shared spigot in a common yard area, that was a permanent mud pit.
Most Northeastern and Midwestern cities peaked in population in 1950. This wasn't so much "denisty" as modern armchair urbanists like to see it as it was overcrowding. Due to the effects of the Depression and War, there hadn't been any large-scale construction since the 1920s. For the generation who fought in the War, staying in the city meant living with your parents, or in a small, worn-out apartment. These problems had been evident in cities across the globe for decades, but progressive reforms ran head-on into a political class that wouldn't sacrifice economic growth. Le Corbusier's dream of bulldozing Paris and replacing it with The Radiant City wasn't just a personal affectation but a reflection of enlightened reform thinking of the time. This is why my paternal grandparents moved to the suburbs in 1940, and on my mother's side 1955. To that generation, there was nothing cool or nostalgic about urban life. There was no reason to be concerned about walkable cities when everyone had a car, and for corporations, there was no reason to be downtown if your entire office staff lived in the suburbs.
The result was that at at time when America was experiencing an unprecedented level of prosperity, major cities were experiencing an urban crisis that saw middle class residents decamping for the suburbs at an alarming rate, employers threatening to do the same, and tax revenues heading into a death spiral. Even New York, one of the few cities to gain population during the postwar period, suffered declining property values as new residents were poorer than those displaced. The urban renewal projects that are much-maligned today did not happen because city leaders collectively went insane, or because they all hated minorities (the deleterious effects to minority populations weren't apparent until well into the renewal era); they happened because governments at all levels were desperate to stanch the bleeding, and the only way they saw out of the crisis was to demolish everything that made the cities unattractive and outdated and replace them with what was attractive and modern.
We know now, of course, that these efforts were doomed to failure. Lots of projects were never completed after preliminary results looked grim, but even fully-realized projects never had the effects that were expected. The ensuing decades saw increasing crime and disinvestment, where abandoning properties in what should have been prime real estate was more cost-effective than rehabilitating them. New York almost went bankrupt in the 1970s, and most other cities outside the Sun Belt weren't doing much better. The crack epidemic and the rise of gang violence took things to unprecedented levels, and the crime wave that began in the 1960s has only subsided relatively recently.
The places that abut downtowns you are so appalled by have always existed, and it's only recently that these districts aren't like that. When everyone had to walk to work, downtown areas were the only desirable places to live, despite the disadvantages inherent to living in areas that were often industrial in nature. If you owned a foundry or a textile mill you preferred to live next to it, and so did your employees. Just outside of this downtown core was an area occupied by those who could not afford to live downtown. Since cities weren't as economically segregated in those days, this meant the poorest of the poor, usually blacks and immigrants, who were crammed into shoddily built tenements and in some cases lived in what were essentially shantytowns. When the railroad and later streetcars made commuting possible, the middle classes leapfrogged these slum areas and moved to areas further out, while the wealthy had what were effectively country estates. As better and better transportation became available, people moved even farther away, and what were once fashionable suburbs became occupied by those of decreasing means, but the areas closest in were never fashionable and became increasingly desperate as time went on.
In some cities, these were the target of renewal efforts, as with Pittsburgh's Lower Hill District, or Mill Creek Valley in St. Louis. In some cases the neighborhoods continued to deteriorate but were later revived, as in Cincinatti's Over-the-Rhine, Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square, and Boston's North End. And in some cases they simply never gentrified, like in the Tenderloin and Skid Row. You can complain about these areas now, but things were unbelievably worse 50 years ago. So please answer this question for me: When exactly do you think things were so great in American cities?
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