Lessons learned? What the destruction of Boston’s West End should teach us today

Yesterday’s urban renewal is today’s gentrification. A bold statement? Perhaps, but there is no doubt that when neighborhoods are redeveloped in ways that exile their longtime residents and businesses, just as much — if not more — can be lost as gained.

That is the story of Boston’s West End, a vibrant, diverse, tight-knit community that vanished under the so-called “urban renewal” of the 1950s. Many of its 7,500 residents relocated to Somerville where their families remain today.

West End tenement houses with mom-and-pop storefronts fell to the wrecking ball, ultimately to be replaced by high-rises with professed suburban amenities, all in the…