Urban Crisis: National Policy 1

Feb. 25

Key Terms/Concepts

• There is no unified federal urban policy• Instead, key polices flow from housing

and transportation• Housing policy key policy: Urban Renewal• Growth machine

Overview Argument of Chapter

• Chapter lays out succession of federal urban policy programs

• Central Message: “the programs meant to help slum dwellers in the cities were cancelled out by a set of policies that intensified racial segregation in the cities and subsidized white flight to the suburbs” p. 179

What is “Federal Urban Policy”?

• Fed urban policy doesn’t exist as a unified whole• Instead, policy made up of multiple, disparate

programs• Two most important areas : transportation and

housing• Fed “highway building powerfully shaped urban

spatial development”, but wasn’t primary goal• Siloed administration essentially rammed

highways through urban centers• Today we’ll look at housing with transportation

covered in more depth in next class

The Politics of Slum Clearance

• Housing Act of 1949 key legislation designed to “rebuild cities, eliminate slums and blight, and provide decent housing for the nation’s citizens” p. 180.

• Act pushed by real estate industry, but included some public housing elements

The Politics of Slum Clearance

• Housing Act of 1949: 3 key pieces1. Provided $ to subsidize below-market price for

land cleared for urban renewal2. $ given for land assembly and clearance3. Agencies supposed to provide housing to

displaced citizens

• Taken as a whole Act created “urban renewal”• Urban renewal= “a federally subsidized program of

slum clearance and urban redevelopment established through the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954” Gotham p. 269

How Local Politics Shaped Urban Renewal

• Focus of local projects on CBD development, not improved condition of “slum residents” p. 181

• Housing Act of 1949 supposed to be focus on residential housing improvement, but “low-income housing was sacrificed to commercial development” p.181

• Rule writing allowed a project to be classified as residential if 51% of funds went to this purpose

How Local Politics Shaped Urban Renewal

• Public housing component was “racialized”

• In Chicago, “mobs gathered to keep blacks from moving into a project on the southwest side” p. 181

How Local Politics Shaped Urban Renewal

• Slum clearance and economic redevelopment components, however, popular with mayors

• “Seizing on redevelopment as a way to secure federal funds, enterprising mayors were able to simultaneously advance their own political careers and improve the public image of the city” p. 182.

• This is link to growth machine. • What is the growth machine again?

How Local Politics Shaped Urban Renewal

• Growth machine concept put forth by Logan and Molotch in 1987

• Growth Machine= way to understand urban politics that argues that “an array of real estate and banking interests…dominates and controls the urban redevelopment process” Gotham p. 270 and 271.

• Essentially, a “growth coalition” develops between politicians and real estate and banking interests

• Growth coalition frame can be used to understand urban politics

How Local Politics Shaped Urban Renewal

• Govt used eminent domain power to seize “blighted” property to assemble land for redevelopment

• “From 1953 to 1986…over $13 billion in direct federal spending had been committed to urban renewal” p. 183.

• Result was neighborhoods leveled across the country and limited real re-development

• Example: Los Angeles

Lost Los Angeles:

Urban Renewal and Lost Streets of Bunker Hill

History of Area

•Bunker Hill Area Downtown LA Subdivided in 1869

•In 1880s Area Was Most Fashionable Address in Los Angeles (Queen Anne and Eastlake Styles)

•By 1920s and 30s Area Population Began to Turn Over-Move Towards Rooming District

•Area Still Seen as an Asset as Late as 1941

•By 1951, Area was Described as a Slum

•Urban Renewal Wiped Area Clean; Corporate High-Rise Landscape

1910 Aerial Image: Bunker Hill

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=4870297

https://la.curbed.com/2018/11/28/18115002/bunker-hill-towers-redevelopment-history

“The redevelopment plan followed the doctrines of modernist city planning. It segregated pedestrian and auto-traffic, created superblocks and megastructures, differentiated one zone of activity from the other, and in so doing, stripped from these Bunker Hill streets the vibrancy and overlay of functions that had characterized them for almost a century” Loukaitou-Sideris and Sansbury p. 400

Racial Segregation and “The Projects”

• Impacts from Urban Renewal significant: by 1961, 126,000 housing units eliminated with only 28,000 new units built to replace them

• 90% decrease in low-income housing in urban renewal areas

• Only 1% of funds spent on relocation assistance (p. 186 and 187)

• Dislocated concentrated in public housing • Result: fed policy reinforced and intensified

racial segregation

Racial Segregation and “The Projects”

• Result: fed policy reinforced and intensified racial segregation

• Slum clearance essentially “became a means of moving blacks from potentially valuable real estate” (p. 189) adjacent to CBDs.

Kansas City: Linking Federal Aid to the Growth Machine

Gotham: “The council manger system of local government and the legal precept of eminent domain were the mechanisms that united the growth coalition around the issue of slum clearance, legitimating private control of public resources, and providing the “up-links” (Molotch1999) connect growth-machine up-links to the local growth coalition with the state and federal governments to fund urban renewal and enact favorable state-level regulations” p. 284 and 285.

Gotham: “Despite the clearance of people and buildings during the 1950s and 1960s, the establishment of a new convention center (Bartle Hall), and the creation of a system of expressways convergingon the CBD, by 1970 Kansas City had clearly become a city where the downtown carried little meaning for most of the metropolitan area’sresidents.” p. 287.

A Tale of Two Neighborhoods: KC, Mo and Johnson County, KS

12th and Vine

Mission Hills

Charlie Parker and KC Jazz

How Charlie Parker Changed Jazz Forever (feat. Bobby Watson) (11 Minutes):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6_kbDGIBdc

No Urban Renewal Projects in Area

“It may have been a kind of hell for reform-minded citizens, but for pianist Mary Lou Williams, it was ‘a heavenly city- musicians everywhere’” Ken Burns p. 197.

Mary Lou Williams

Jazz Overview of Charlie Parker with Stanley Crouch C-SPAN 2 (0 to 4:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhlpcrUrzgk

“Learning How to Hear”

Charlie Parker

Urban Renewal Kansas City

12th

and Vine

Legacy: Thick Injustice

Your Turn

What is urban renewal?How did it shape American cities?What lessons can we draw from the impacts of the program?

Key Terms/Concepts

• There is no unified federal urban policy• Instead, key polices flow from housing

and transportation• Housing policy key policy: Urban Renewal• Growth machine