Editing Lawrence, Massachusetts (section)

====Urban redevelopment and renewal====
[[Image:Lawrence Pan Dec 21 2021.jpg|thumb|Merrimack River at Lawrence]]
[[Image:2010 Lawrence Massachusetts aerial 4361131115.jpg|thumb|upright|Aerial view of Merrimack River and Lawrence, 2010]]

Like other northeastern cities suffering from the effects of post-[[World War II]] [[deindustrialization|industrial decline]], Lawrence has often made efforts at revitalization, some of them controversial. The Lawrence Redevelopment Authority and city officials utilized eminent domain for a perceived public benefit, via a top-down approach, to revitalize the city throughout the 1960s. Known first as urban redevelopment, and then urban renewal, Lawrence's local government's actions towards vulnerable immigrant and poor communities, contained an undercurrent of gentrification which lies beneath the goals to revitalize Lawrence. There was a clash of differing ideals and perceptions of blight, growth, and what constituted a desirable community. Ultimately the discussion left out those members of the community who would be directly impacted by urban redevelopment.<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Pernice|first=Nicolas M.|date=2011|title=Urban Redevelopment of Lawrence, MA. Retrospective Case Study of the Plains Neighborhood|degree=MSc|access-date=June 3, 2024|publisher=University of Massachusetts Lowell|url=https://lawrencehistory.org/sites/LHIST-D10-PR1/files/uploads/Urban%20Redevelopment%20of%20Lawrence%2C%20MA.%20Retrospective%20Case%20Study%20of%20the%20Plains%20Neighborhood%20by%20Nick%20Pernice.pdf}}</ref>

Under the guise of [[urban renewal]], large tracts of downtown Lawrence were razed in the 1970s, and replaced with parking lots and a three-story parking garage connected to a new Intown Mall intended to compete with newly constructed suburban malls. The historic Theater Row along Broadway was also razed, destroying ornate movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s that entertained mill workers through the [[Great Depression]] and the Second World War. The city's main post office, an ornate Federalist-style building at the corner of Broadway and Essex Street, was razed. Most of the structures were replaced with one-story, steel-frame structures with large parking lots, housing such establishments as fast food restaurants and chain drug stores, fundamentally changing the character of the center of Lawrence.{{Citation needed|reason=Original ref dead and removed|date=November 2009}}

Lawrence also attempted to increase its employment base by attracting industries unwanted in other communities, such as waste treatment facilities and incinerators.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}} From 1980 until 1998, private corporations operated two trash incinerators in Lawrence.  Activist residents successfully blocked the approval of a waste treatment center on the banks of the Merrimack River near the current site of Salvatore's Pizza on Merrimack Street.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}}

Recently the focus of Lawrence's urban renewal has shifted to preservation rather than sprawl.