Before the Bulldozers: Historic Southwest D.C. Exposed

Before the Bulldozers: Historic Southwest D.C. Exposed  is an audio and augmented reality journey exploring the history of the redevelopment of the Southwest neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Using GPS, this Walking Cinema app guides you from site to site through D.C.’s Southwest Neighborhood, telling the story of the country’s first large-scale urban renewal project—a project that uprooted 23,000 people and knocked down nearly 5,000 buildings to create an entirely new neighborhood. This short walk presents two worlds that were co-existing in the 1950s Southwest: A close-knit African American neighborhood on its way out and a highly modern, mostly white neighborhood on its way in.  These neighborhoods are being captured, shaped, and fought for by two massive creative minds:  the old neighborhood by the amateur photographer Joseph Owen Curtis, and the new neighborhood by architect Chloethiel Woodard Smith. As you walk, you alternate viewpoints and see how vastly different concepts of social benefit are still reflected in the visual landscape.