![urban renewal urban renewal](https://idsb.tmgrup.com.tr/2014/03/07/HaberDetay/1394134643203.jpg)
At least two comprehensive studies, by Charles Abrams and Scott Greer, are nearing publication, and one highly negative analysis-by an ultra-conservative economist and often irresponsible polemicist-has already appeared: Martin Anderson's The Federal Bulldozer. (Norman Mailer carried such thinking to its farthest point in his recent attack in the New York Times Magazine on the physical and social sterility of high-rise housing Mailer's attack was also accompanied by an entirely reasonable suggestion-in fact the only viable one that could be made in this context-that the advantages of brownstone living be incorporated into skyscraper projects.)īut if criticism of the urban renewal program has in the past been spotty and sporadic, there are signs that the program as a whole is now beginning to be seriously and tellingly evaluated.
![urban renewal urban renewal](https://d3i71xaburhd42.cloudfront.net/67d9991280472f99c96fd3138ef1e708dd627ebb/10-Figure1-1.png)
But these efforts have been directed mainly at private clearance outside the federal program, and their intent has been to save the city for people (intellectuals and artists, for example) who, like tourists, want jumbled diversity, antique “charm,” and narrow streets for visual adventure and aesthetic pleasure. Slum clearance has also come under fire from several prominent architectural and social critics, led by Jane Jacobs, who have been struggling to preserve neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, with their brownstones, lofts, and small apartment houses, against the encroachment of the large, high-rise projects built for the luxury market and the poor alike. In the last few years, the civil rights movement has backed protesting slum-dwellers, though again only at the local level, while rightists have opposed the use of eminent domain to take private property from one owner in order to give it to another (especially when the new one is likely to be from out-of-town and financed by New York capital). Slum-dwellers whose homes were to be torn down have indeed protested bitterly, but their outcries have been limited to particular projects and because such outcries have rarely been supported by the local press, they have been easily brushed aside by the political power of the supporters of the projects in question. These critiques, however, have mostly appeared in academic books and journals otherwise there has been remarkably little public discussion of the federal program. In addition to relocating the slum dwellers in “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing, the program was intended to stimulate large-scale private rebuilding, add new tax revenues to the dwindling coffers of the cities, revitalize their downtown areas, and halt the exodus of middle-class whites to the suburbs.įor some time now, a few city planners and housing experts have been pointing out that urban renewal was not achieving its general aims, and social scientists have produced a number of critical studies of individual renewal projects. Since 1949, this program has provided local renewal agencies with federal funds and the power of eminent domain to condemn slum neighborhoods, tear down the buildings, and resell the cleared land to private developers at a reduced price.
![urban renewal urban renewal](https://revitalization.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Burlington.jpg)
Absurd as this may sound, change the jalopies to slum housing, and I have described, with only slight poetic license, the first fifteen years of a federal program called urban renewal.
Urban renewal drivers#
Suppose, then, that to replenish the supply of automobiles, it gave these drivers a hundred dollars each to buy a good used car and also made special grants to General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to lower the cost-although not necessarily the price-of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Imperials by a few hundred dollars. Suppose that the government decided that jalopies were a menace to public safety and a blight on the beauty of our highways, and therefore took them away from their drivers.