The West in the Age of Urban Renewal:
Before Crossing the Western Urban Renewal Trail, Let’s Circle our Wagons
The “thing” about urban renewal in the west is that for the most part[1] it lags urban renewal in the east by almost two decades. Western cities enjoyed the benefits of eastern city experience including the mid-sixties race riots. Most western cities did not need to cope with the effects of intense racial or neighborhood transition as did their eastern counterparts. The eastern cities had carved out urban renewal, and involved the federal government in it, from their own perceived needs, suburbanization dynamics, and policy priorities which matched poorly with those of younger western cities.
Viewed from the city-level, western urban renewal did not develop from the same “roots” as Big City urban renewal (Depression-era housing/planning, decentralization and CBD decline). Rather western cities took advantage of an already existing federal program to accomplish their own specific ends—in the pre-1975 period principally transportation infrastructure and CBD redevelopment. Complicating the picture, some major cities (Dallas and Fort Worth the most prominent) declined to participate in the federal program. By the time western cities got around to serious urban renewal the birth of economic development, the profession, discipline and policy area was pretty much an accomplished fact. The transition from private economic development to governmental which almost silently occurred into the sixties was now fully evident—municipal and even state governments were actively and independently making economic development policy decisions with their own EDOs.
The eastern version of urban renewal was carved out precisely in the same years as war production industrial/population migration hit most in-land western cities, providing for the first time a critical mass to establish them as a major city–and which simultaneously fueled their suburban hinterland as well. Forgive the obvious flippancy, but western cities were simply not in “the same place” as eastern cities in 1945 and through the fifties. While many western cities will start planning and talking about urban revitalization during the mid and late fifties, most western states did not pass enabling legislation until the late fifties or even early sixties. Actual projects did not start or become completed until the early to middle sixties—when the Big Cities were reeling from Jane Jacobs, reading Herbert Gans or the Federal Bulldozer, and, by 1965, shocked by the urban riots and a fully unleashed Great Society. Eastern and western urban renewal almost, maybe literally, a generation apart, sprang from different roots, confronted different physical, economic and political environments, and was used for different purposes.
Urban revitalization generally, and urban renewal specifically followed from western city postwar political and governmental developments. Adjusting to the new-found economic and population growth, the postwar years—stretching in some cases to the end of the fifties—meant victory by new business elites over the traditional/native business elites. Often separating themselves from the previously dominant chambers, the new western business leadership created a new set of organizations, both political and economic in order to capture power and control city hall. Once ensconced, the new city efficient-style Progressives embraced charter reform installing their basic infrastructure and upgrading the capacity of their municipal governments. Initially, these Progressive elites made every effort to “manage” growth and their suburban problem, occasionally through metropolitan planning, but always through annexation. By the late 1950’s though, suburbanization had not been effectively managed, and continued population increases propelled many cities to sizes they had never dreamed of—they were carving out a presence in the national media, politics and less noticed, the national economy. It was time for the western urban debutante to “come out”—and urban renewal was the gown to wear for the occasion.
Young cities seem more ostentatious in their policies; eastern cities certainly had been such in the early twentieth century City Beautiful movement. These cities didn’t want to simply modernize, they wanted to make a statement—let the world know they had arrived. In true herd-style, they copied each other and sought to one up other cities. They also wanted to ensure their central city CBD was at least, the first among equals, as their metropolitan political, economic, cultural and entertainment marketplaces. In that their suburbs by the early sixties had sufficient power to constrain annexation and develop autonomous jurisdictional policy systems, the central cities, able to access to federal urban renewal dollars, discovered that urban renewal filled the bill quite nicely—combining both goals of image-making/competitive urban hierarchy and “managing” on a new level the autonomous suburban hinterland. By the late fifties and early sixties, most western cities developed urban renewal programs.
In most southern and western cities, efforts to rebuild and expand the central business district … showed the strengths and weaknesses of businessmen’s government … it involved the use of federal urban renewal program to assist private investment directly by assembling developable land at low cost and indirectly by providing necessary public facilities in downtown areas. In the urban renewal alliance, it was impossible to separate public and private interest, to untangle private real estate booms and surges of public construction, and to differentiate between the goals of bureaucrats and businessmen. … On a broad scale, urban renewal became a tool in intercity rivalries for economic advantage. … The list of common projects also [in addition to abundant office space, business headquarters, and centralize the facilities of regional public administration and finance] included a trade center, a convention-exhibition center [with hotels], and a public university campus.[2]
So western cities entered into the era described by Calvin Trillin as “municipal domeism”, a spreading infection fueled by civic pride “on a single project of pharaonic scale”.[3] Astrodome, followed by the Kingdome, topped by the Superdome; Atlanta Regency-Hyatt/Peachtree Center, Kansas City Crown Center, Los Angeles Center City—and then there was the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport[4]. The reader gets the picture! This is the face of western-style urban renewal. “In the best tradition of urban boosterism, a successful redevelopment program became a selling point in itself as a symbol of civic unity and modernity. New sports arenas and stadiums were intended to confirm the new image of a ‘major league city’.[5] Other noted projects of this period were: El Paso’s Civic and Convention Center (1972), the Phoenix Civic Plaza (1972), Albuquerque Civic Plaza (1972) and the Tucson Community and Civic Center (1971). Interestingly, as several “snapshots” below will demonstrate, the “downtown urban renewal projects” did not necessarily stop with the termination of the federal urban renewal program in 1974. Although academics and commentators decreased usage of the term, the absence of federal funds, in part because other federal programs such as the Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) partially filled the gap, or private, state and local funds were found. Downtown urban renewal by any other name continued through the 1970’s and even into the early 1980’s.
The Policy System: Political Leadership, Business Coalitions, Business EDOs and Broadening
Was the business coalition that led western cities into boosterism and urban renewal during the late fifties and sixties identical to that described by Wilson for eastern cities a decade or two earlier? Well, yes—and no. First, in both models, the private sector was the driver behind urban renewal. This was true in 1950 in the East and the 1960’s in the West. The initial difference between the two models was that in the East, the private sector allied closely with the new independent (from machines) “entrepreneurial” strong mayor while this alliance, for the most part did not develop in the West until the 1970’s (and the mayor was often a weaker mayor in a city manager form of government) (Kansas City, San Diego, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City. Los Angeles (weak mayor) and Portland (commission). Seattle, San Francisco and Denver (the latter two city/county) possess a strong mayor form of government—but in both the first decade (the fifties) of urban renewal was pretty much a bust. Albuquerque was a strong mayor as well. This is an important qualification and it is a major reason why there is almost a two-phased urban renewal effort in several cities. It may not be an overstatement to observe that while the business sector pushed hard for urban renewal, it was mayor-dominated political leadership that mostly made it happen.
The more difficult part of this question is if, and how the private sector business leadership differed among each city. There are few studies that permit comparison among cities. Boston’s elite Vault included the highest echelon of Boston’s business community and they had to pay to play. San Diego came close with San Diegans Inc, but Oklahoma City’s “elite cabal” does not compare with the conventional vault-like business leadership. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Council and San Francisco’s Bay Area Council and SPUR probably was the best example of elite private sector leadership which drove urban renewal, but also other critical regional issues as well. For me at least, the segments of the business community involved in these organizations, corresponds rather poorly to the more common form of business leadership, the so-called growth coalition[6].
Molotch’s (and Fainstein et al) growth coalition usually includes business leaders in finance, real estate, downtown property owners/retailers, newspapers and utilities. These are refugees from the old Real Estate Exchanges who (with the newspapers as an exception, I suppose) never were known for their community statesmen-like motivations. As to a growth coalition chiefly composed of business FIRE executive, I would not totally disagree with this stereotype, except that it is usually carried too far[7]. It is clear to me that this type of business leadership did play an important role in western urban renewal, and as we discussed previously, gradually took over leadership of the Eastern Big City redevelopment agencies during the 1960’s and after. Clarence Stone and his “regime” approach to the business-public policy nexus, while perhaps too flexible, is more able to assess the FIRE business community.
In any case, as Abbott states “Coalitions of downtown businesses and investors therefore took the lead in selling urban renewal programs to city councils and the voters in a number of [western] cities in the years around 1960. In Portland, Tucson, and Richmond, leading businessmen were largely responsible for the revival of urban renewal several years after initial defeats. Typical business coalitions were Downtown Denver Incorporated (1955) and the Downtown Master Plan Committee (1961), the Greater Baltimore Committee (1962), and Downtown Tulsa Unlimited (1955)”[8]. Once again, it is apparent that a new set of private EDOs, apart and away from the Chambers of Commerce, were jump-started into existence in the Age of Urban Renewal. These EDOs despite their anti-suburban strategy were focused on the viability of the CBD, tended to restrict policy-making to real estate and marketing approaches, but did so that economic sustainability was possible. These entities, many of which are operating in the twenty-first century, were also forerunners of a new generation of EDOs which would follow in the 1980’s.
What was obvious in the East after the sixties riots and the Great Society was that the fairly closed Big City economic development policy system sort of imploded. This did not happen in the West, by and large, although the San Francisco Yorba Buena project did evidence a serious breakdown in that city’s policy system. The Watts Riot also profoundly altered the context of Los Angeles policy-making. Up to the late 60’s, business groups in western cities, a mixture of elite and growth coalitions, not only led, but effectively closed the economic development policy system—and they pointed it toward our broadly defined urban renewal strategy. The chink in their dominance was the voter refusal to approve bond referendums. Business dominance in a closed economic development policy system did not survive the sixties.
The programs of the Great Society, however, did have an impact—Model City and various neighborhood planning and social service programs created a new set of sub-municipal semi-EDO organizations which incrementally intruded into the semi-closed economic development policy system. The alliance with a charismatic young mayor came at a cost of a enlarged set of actors in that policy system. The western population growth continued, infused to a large degree by a young generational cohort which when settled, thought, and voted, very differently. Challenges to balance economic growth with the environment, historic preservation and quality of life became just as important as low tax, and limited government fiscal issues. The geographic change of focus followed, with urban renewal eventually becoming as concerned with neighborhoods as with the competitiveness of the central business district. Western urban renewal in the 1970’s was seriously different from that of the fifties and sixties.
[1] Atlanta is the chief exception, corresponding more to the Eastern model as does San Francisco to a lesser degree.
[2] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit, p. 144. Abbott’s Chapter 6, “The Renewal Era” is probably the best single source for western-style urban renewal. Specific detailed examples of several cities are developed.
[3] Calvin Trillin, “U.S. Journal, Kansas City”, pp. 94-101.
[4] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit, p. 143.
[5] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit, p. 144.
[6] Harvey Molotch, “the City as Growth Machine”, American Journal of Sociology, 82, (September 1976), pp. 304-332.
[7] My professional experience is that real estate business leadership is not known for leaving a dime on the table, or a penny for that matter—but their focus is as much what it takes to make a real estate deal work in the long run (obtain financing and market competitiveness), as simple desire for profits. These individuals can see a larger picture (they are often as involved in the central city as in suburbs), but their comprehensive image/vision is filtered through a real estate prism. Without their competence and leadership few physical development or redevelopment programs conducted by the private sector would be successful. Planners and economic developers tend to be poor developers and construction/property managers. For me, therefore, the evil capitalist profit-seeking Neo-Liberal image of the growth coalition is too severe., often leaving one with no alternative than riding these evil weevils out of the city on a rail after having tarred and feathered them.
[8] Carl Abbott, the New Urban America, op. cit., p. 149.
Conclusion: The Western Model of Urban Renewal
Aside from the now predictable diversity of experiences among Western cities urban renewal programs, at least two major departures from the more Eastern Big City model. First, there is a serious time lag going on. We are not talking about the forties or fifties, but rather the late sixties, seventies and even early eighties. The eastern Big City model is clearly losing steam and momentum just when the Western cities are going into high gear. The second obvious departure is the role of federal urban renewal dollars. There is a wide swatch of cities, ranging across the nation–from Houston to San Diego–that not only do not take advantage of federal monies, but consistently reject them. Indeed, most Western cities continue to pursue the urban renewal strategy after the federal program terminated. Are the two differences related? Or are there different things going on such as divergent local political culture?
What is obvious is that both models share their core strategy which is a reaction to suburbanization/ central city primacy, and that the CBD is principal target whose revitalization is pivotal to that strategy’s success. The cities in both models, despite the time periods and use of federal funds, are employing the same strategy and approach (physical redevelopment, infrastructure, and private-public partnership using redevelopment agencies). But, having said that, there are also differences in each of these shared factors. First, many Western cities are not following the anti-suburban strategy exclusively. Cities in the Eastern Big City Model are noticeably more inward-looking—New York City’s urban renewal program is not competing with Chicago’s, for instance. That is not the case with many Western cities where sensitivity to the hierarchy of cities is more obvious. In addition to countering the effects of suburbanization, western cities tend to be also “making a statement” with their CBD urban renewal initiatives. That this is a characteristic of our Privatist political culture may be relevant to consider.
Secondly, Western cities clearly developed simultaneously alongside their suburbs. And the suburbs on their own attracted residents who did not ever pass through the regional central city. The Eastern Big City could claim with some justification that residents were fleeing/being pushed/attracted to cross jurisdictional boundaries, but this is much less the case in Western cities. Western cities are much credited with saving themselves through their aggressive annexation program, but, in the end, that program could not keep up with sustained suburban population growth. The limited success of annexation lured the Western central cities into using a CBD/infrastructure urban renewal strategy. To make matters more different, by the seventies it was somewhat clear to the participants that the suburbs were not going away, that metropolitan government was not a viable next strategy, and that urban renewal ought to discover and/or re-forge a new role for the central city in a multi-nucleated metropolitan area. The typical Eastern Big City individual suburb, while economically formidable and political independent, never reached such sufficient scale or size to create a true multi-nucleated metro area.
Thirdly, the content of Western city urban renewal was both modified from its Eastern Big City experience, and extended to the neighborhoods in a fashion considerably different than that of the fifties and even sixties. Certainly, federal regulatory changes, the sixties’ riots, and the Policy World critique did play a role in the modification, but something else changed. Planners in western cities were more likely to be and work in new young departments, more desirous of working with residents and the community, and more accepting of Jane Jacobs’ make little plans and encourage diversity. The residents and voters of western cities had a different set of values and expectations, and elected different candidates to office. In the midst of the Age of Urban Renewal a generational shift had occurred—a new cohort was on the scene, and they voted and participated more. Respect for the environment and the effects of growth on the quality of life were also major changes. Having said this, the widely dispersed prevalence of a low-tax, limited government political culture dominated the early years of Western urban renewal, and bent, but did not break apart, in the latter years. Indeed, Proposition 13 was western in origin and it became a national movement, culminating in the election of Reagan.
Moreover, the profession of economic development had clearly separated itself from planning and had the benefit of learning from a new academic Policy World, but from older economic developers who saw the pitfalls of the Eastern Big City model. In particular, the primacy of physical redevelopment in economic development was being challenged by economic developers willing to work at the neighborhood level with CDBG programs, to use TIF, or to extend the field into providing direct assistance to firms: lending, incubators, small business formation/ counseling, or upgrading industrial parks (or by the eighties, technology and research centers). These are all facets of the time lag between the two models, to be sure, but time had changed the people and the landscape and the content of the urban renewal programs shifted accordingly.
In that I described the content of the Eastern Big City model as “brutal”, the Western Model, even in its purist Privatist manifestations, was somewhat more forgiving. The bulldozer no longer leveled entire blocks, the highway’s path more sensitively determined, and rehabilitation and commercial revitalization was noticeably impacted by involvement of neighborhood-based and, in the later years, historic preservation EDOs. Planning involved both and residents as well. It might also be mentioned that racial change was less a factor in the West than in Northern/Midwestern cities. Nothing was perfect, no claim is made that all went well, but the application of urban renewal was markedly less “brutal”, and tended to show its kinder and gentler side.
One of the factors that affected the content of Western urban renewal was that the players in the economic development policy process had changed. If nothing else there were lots more of them. The jurisdictional policy process of Eastern Big Cities was way more closed than that of the late seventies western city. The policy process was also different in the West. City Managers, not strong Mayors initially shaped the early years of the Western model. It would seem that city managers in a reformed city, influenced by the city councils’, were more willing to work with an independent private sector-led and financed urban renewal program. The role of the private sector was much more obvious and pronounced. But these early years demonstrated that public governance in city manager systems ultimately rested on the city council, less the mayor—and on having the top echelons of the business community, united and aggressively putting their pocket book where their mouth was. The issue of sufficient government capacity, from time to time, also was evident. In several instances new bureaucracies, including EDOs had to be set up and integrated into the jurisdictional policy process.
The city manager was strongest in carrying out direction from political leadership than in leading it. So with the seventies, the Western model changed abruptly, mostly I suspect from the new generational cohort voting in young, charismatic, dynamic mayors who espoused agendas and programs and were able to provide a more consistent leadership for both the council and the city manager/bureaucracy. The great success of the western model in many cities is directly tied to these new mayors. And it might be added, that there is no mistaking Pete Wilson with Mayor Daley or Abe Beame (to be fair, Kevin White and John Lindsey did make easier comparisons). The role of the state, certainly through the seventies, was less evident—usually confined to highway infrastructure and passage of enabling legislation. It is, however, worth note, that in California and the Northwest (Oregon especially) the state did play a leading role in the use and definition of urban renewal. This was also somewhat true back East.
And when it was said and done, easily forgotten is that the politics of Western urban renewal was the politics of growth; the politics of the Eastern Big City model is the politics of job and population decline. The chasm between the models created by this factor alone is huge. Among other effects of growth politics are less need for a strong federal role, and a need to “manage” growth to conform to generational and voters’ expectations. Finally, I suspect the simple “age” of the Western city, younger—really less than two generations if one considers population size—affected the content of a CBD urban renewal strategy. More important was the placement of infrastructure, highways and airports than wholesale bulldozing of the CBD. What the CBD needed, it seemed, was a good dose of “City Beautiful”-like public buildings, city halls, civic centers, museums, theatres, and above, all, sports stadia and corporate headquarters buildings. When the Eastern Big City urban renewal model shifted to waterfront revitalization and festival markets in the 1980’s, they were, in effect, as much competing with Western cities as with their suburban hinterlands.
Ron W. Coan 