URBAN RENEWAL?
Two long-term takeaways follow from this section. The first observation to the observant reader is that, concentrating as we did on Housing Acts, we did not include discussion of what may have been the most horrendously disruptive of all the various “urban renewal” initiatives—the Interstate Highway. That delightful tidbit will be discussed in a later chapter because it is not urban renewal at all—or Housing Act for that matter. Yet, as we all know, today it is usually lumped into urban renewal because they shared a similar chronology—and methodology (they dug up people’s homes and destroyed small business). That omission provides an opportunity to observe that there are many “urban renewals”—not a single monolithic truth that encompasses the incredible varieties of initiatives, projects, programs and goals that were implemented over the 30-year period included in the label.
Ironically, the constant in each of the various programs was slum removal—and that is not even in our present vocabulary. After the 1970s, broad strokes replaced specific initiatives, ignored program goals, which level of government was the implementer, and the time periods got smushed together. A generation of public housing/war production and slum removal simply was no longer discussed. Whether this is directly related to the urban renewal scuffle between CD and ED is problematic, but it is reasonable to suggest that a scuffle still lurks in the allies of our policy area/profession. The smush of urban renewal has developed into a paradigm-like mass of distortion perpetualized in the media, Policy World literature and classrooms—while being largely ignored in the Practitioner World.
The smush asserts the myth that urban renewal started in 1949 (first mentioned in 1954) and was restricted to business-led (growth coalition) and CBD projects. The impact of the smush falls almost solely upon those who lived in the Second (and Third) Ghettos. In these literatures all sorts of nasty villains roamed our Big City streets in the Dark Age of urban renewal. Urban renewal, never really defined, became a national urban morality play—one whose redeeming message seemed to be “what not to do.” One might observe from all this that urban renewal itself has become a fault line within the two approaches of our profession/policy area and that, to this day, our two ships still duke it out.
The second observation, perhaps more an impression, applies to intergovernmental policy-making/implementation. Just who drove the slum removal, public housing, war production and urban renewal dynamic? From this history, the correct answer should be no one—in different periods one or another led the parade, but implementation at the jurisdictional level is little understood. Business elites after an initial Washington victory went AWOL for most of the thirties, only to reappear in the federally dominant war production years. Mayors and local corporate elites in the forties largely ignored a non-existent federal role and developed on their own dime initiatives that later required federal monies in an urban renewal program. We continue not to mention the Interstate Highway system that overlapped with the urban renewal program. The contexts of each initiative and program were dissimilar and the goals intended by each level of government, never mind policy actor, were multiple and varied over time. Each level of government and policy actor was dancing to their own music. And the music changed to fit the mood of the day. The mess that resulted didn’t follow what any one wanted.
Much of the confusion and downright contradiction … result from the unsystematic mixture of three quite different goals. The older goal of increasing low-cost housing, [and] eliminating and preventing slums is mixed with the newer goal of revitalizing the central city; to both has been added the more recent goal of creating the planned American city through the community renewal program. But as these goals are translated into the actions of municipal bodies, based on local interests, they seem to be moving rapidly toward a program concerned only with revitalizing the central business district. (Greer, 1965, p. 165)
The various Housing Acts provided a label for this period, but the central drama that played out is that the Big Cities of the North and Midwest hegemony were entering a decentralization crisis period—and the crisis was only getting worse during, and after, the age. Encapsulated in these years were a variety of efforts and initiatives each city devised in response to its own perceived needs and policy forces. Federal programs provided federal money, and to the extent possible ways were devised to make them fit into the local strategies; but it is very clear that, as time elapsed, the original purpose of the federal programs—slum clearance for public housing—lost ground to housing for all incomes, and then to CBD regeneration and on to attracting a rising financial and service economy (refunctioning the central city). In this Transitional Age, the action was in Washington; but the dynamic, the leadership and the bulk of the money to regenerate the central city ultimately came from mayors and the private sector, not the federal government. The federal government was only one ring in a three-ringed circus.
Yet, if I am correct in observing, the one goal that all parties to urban redevelopment shared—to counter decentralization and preserve the heritage and hegemony of the central city—was an out-and-out failure. It certainly did provide public and war production housing—which had to be torn down in later decades. It removed slums, and that ultimately brought down the existing jurisdictional policy systems.
From the beginning. Federal urban redevelopment was a program better suited to stir hopes than produce concrete projects. A multitude of interests rallied behind the passage of Title I, each investing it with a different purpose. Central city business interests viewed it as a means of boosting sagging property values; mayors and city councils perceived it as a tool to increase tax revenues; social welfare leaders hoped it would clear the slums and better the living conditions of the poor … advocates of low and moderate income housing thought it would increase … decent, affordable dwellings … Catherine Bauer [thought] redevelopment won congressional approval ‘because different groups of people, like the blind men feeling the elephant made entirely different assumptions as to the essential nature and purpose of this legislation. (Teaford, 2000, p. 444)
Ron W. Coan 