What OSU learned about our "ghost neighborhoods"

Flashback: We told you last year how the OSU team began making 3D maps of "ghost neighborhoods" using Sanborn fire maps dating to the 1800s.

The latest: In a PLOS ONE study published last week, researchers examined adjacent neighborhoods of Hanford Village and Driving Park that once housed a predominantly Black community on Columbus' Near East Side.

• These neighborhoods were torn apart in the 1960s to make way for I-70.

What they found: The study compared building footprints from 1961 to current built-up areas and determined that 380 buildings were destroyed: 286 houses, 86 garages, five apartments and three stores.

What's next: This type of machine learning can be applied to re-create neighborhoods wrecked by natural disasters or better plan for such challenges as the impacts of extreme heat.

What they're saying: "It's not just for historic purposes, it's also to understand how we move forward and mitigate what are going to be some substantial threats to our cities in the future and to the people who live in them," Harvey Miller, OSU geography professor and one of the paper's authors, tells Axios.

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