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The Politics of Urban Renewal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

P. J. Madgwick
P. J. Madgwick
Affiliation:
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
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Extract

The Housing Act of 1949 established in Title I the goal of ‘a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family’. To achieve this goal the Federal Government was to support, by grants and by its legal powers to acquire land, a massive programme of public housing: ‘…it was the first and, until the Act of 1968, the only public housing measure that authorized action that bore some reasonable relation to need’. Nevertheless, the targets set by the 1949 Act for 1954 have still not been reached. Subsequent legislation shifted the emphasis of the programme from public housing to broader schemes of urban renewal, including non-residential development and middle- and high-income housing. The most serious aspect of this neglect of the needs of the poor has been the inadequate management of relocation for those displaced by renewal. For many slum-dwellers in the 1950s ‘urban renewal’ came to mean ‘Negro removal’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , December 1971 , pp. 265 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 National Commission on Urban Problems (1968), p. III. The Chairman of the Commission was former Senator Paul Douglas, who had been floor manager for the 1949 Bill. The Commission Report is henceforth referred to as Douglas Commission.

2 The problems of relocation are dealt with in Douglas Commission, pp. 87–93. See also Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968), ch. 2, IV. This Report is henceforth referred to, after its Chairman, as Kerner Report.

3 Greer, Scott, Urban Renewal and American Cities (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 3.Google Scholar

4 Douglas Commission, p. 167. For a summary of the achievements of urban renewal, see ibid., p. 165. For a developed critical viewpoint, see Anderson, M., The Federal Bulldozer (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).Google Scholar

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6 For a convenient summary, see, for example, Goodall, L. P., The American Metropolis (Columbus, Ohio, 1968)Google Scholar; also Committee for Economic Development, Modernizing Local Government (Washington, D.C., 1966)Google Scholar. Arguments about fragmentation are, of course, central to current controversies in British local government.

7 For the position in the early 1960s, see Congressional Quarterly, Congress and the Nation (Washington, D.C., 1965), ch. 10Google Scholar. For a recent discussion, see Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, Sub-committee on Fiscal Policy, Revenue Sharing and its Alternatives (1967).

8 For the present condition of the federal system, see Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitan America, Challenge to Federalism (1966) and Urban America and the Federal System (1969). Also Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Senate, Sub-committee on Intergovernmental Relations, Creative Federalism (1967).

9 Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Senate, Sub-committee on Executive Reorganization, Federal Role in Urban Affairs (1966–1967), p. 930. The reports are henceforth referred to as Federal Role.

10 Douglas Commission, pp. 166–9.

11 In 1967, 41% of the non-white population fell below the poverty line as defined by the Social Security Administration. Hence 31% of the total poor were non-whites (Douglas Commission, p. 45)

12 Freedman, L., Public Housing: the Politics of Poverty (New York, 1969), p. 99.Google Scholar

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34 The problem of participation has been faced anew by the Model Cities Program deriving from the legislation of 1966. The Program has had a mixed record in promoting citizen participation, but this includes somes notable success. For example, in Dayton, Ohio, ‘representatives directly elected by the residents’ acquired ‘de facto control over plans and programs’. See Kaplan, Marshall, Cans, and Kahn, , The Model Cities Program (New York, 1970), pp. 35–6, 63–4, 96–7 and 103Google Scholar. Daniel Moynihan's critique of the operation of the participation ideal, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (New York, 1969) relates to the anti-poverty programme.

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46 T. Lowi uses this phrase in his Foreword to Gosnell, H., Machine Politics, Chicago Model Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar. The point may be clearer if ‘well-run’ is taken to mean ‘well-administered’.

47 For Newark, see Kaplan, H., op. cit. The quotations are from pp. 41 and 135.Google Scholar

48 Douglas Commission, pp. 10–11.

49 For the 1968 legislation, see Douglas Commission, p. 173. A rent-supplement programme was introduced in 1965, and HUD strengthened its housing orientation in 1967 (ibid., p. 164).

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51 American Journal of Sociology, 64 (November 1958), 251–61.

52 Banfield, , op. cit., p. 303.Google Scholar