What Did You Do Wrong With Your Life? | The Road That Killed A City

Partial Transcript: I'm standing at the corner of Asylum and Main Street. It's the center of Hartford, Connecticut, a city of about 130,000, with a metro population of over a million. It's a Friday evening, in 2019, the only sounds you can hear are from the cars rushing by. They have plenty of space to exceed the speed limit on open roads.

Segment Synopsis: Hartford, Connecticut, despite having a 6 figure population, seems empty even on a Friday night. All that can be heard is the sound of cars rushing by.

Keywords: Cars; Hartford; Empty

Subjects: Old State House (Hartford, Conn.)

Partial Transcript: The generally accepted diagnosis is that Hartford is a failed city. I was born in Hartford, and I've lived in and around it pretty much my entire life. And I've always been fascinated by this "failure" of a city, and how it happened. Perhaps it's something I think about a lot because I know that it wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, this was the hub of business and culture.

Segment Synopsis: Hartford has been labeled as a failed city, though it used to be quite the opposite, being a highly important and thriving city for most of its history.

Keywords: Change; Hartford; Failed city

Partial Transcript: I've found that one of the best ways to look at Hartford is through the lens of the people who moved here from elsewhere. Tony Chairless is one of these people. He moved to Connecticut in the early 2000's after graduating from Florida State and getting a job at the engineering company Pratt and Whitney. Upon arriving in Connecticut for the first time, he went around looking for an apartment.

Segment Synopsis: An interviewee who moved to the Hartford area from Florida was surprised when his new employer recommended he find a place to live further away from Hartford.

Keywords: Disinvestment; Outside the city; Moving

Partial Transcript: Another person who experienced a bit of what we'll call culture shock is Will Wilkins. He moved to Hartford in 1990. [Wilkins] "I was living in New York City, quite happily, and I met a woman who lived here in Hartford, and fell in love with her, and I came here for that reason."

Segment Synopsis: A transplant from NYC to Hartford is shocked at the way Hartford seems to be racially segregated, and how white people generally didn't live within Hartford.

Keywords: Culture shock; Segregation

Partial Transcript: In Hartford, there are place where white people live, and places they don't. And for the people that come to the city and knowingly or not, break that divide, they often have the same conversation with the people who have been here their whole lives. Mary Cochram is one of those people. When she moved to Hartford, she settled in the Frog Hollow neighborhood, a place known for its high Latin American population.

Segment Synopsis: Several new arrivals into Hartford describe their experience telling others about moving into a neighborhood where they are the racial minority, and the shock that they get in return.

Keywords: Race; Neighborhoods

Partial Transcript: When I was growing up, trips into the city were rare, despite the fact that I only lived a couple of miles away. Living in the suburbs, the entire city was portrayed as a no-go zone. People only went downtown for work, or a sports game, and you'd rarely hang around much before or after. And the surrounding neighborhoods are still mostly a mystery to me.

Segment Synopsis: Jim Krueger shares his own thoughts about Hartford.

Keywords: Danger; Mystery; Hartford