Richard D. Bingham, Public Housing and Urban Renewal: An Analysis of Federal-Local Relations, Praeger Publishers, New York, Martin Robertson, London, 1975, xix+255 pp. £9.65 - Ernest M. Fisher, Housing Markets and Congressional Goals, xv+148 pp. £6.60; Praeger Publishers, New York, Martin Robertson, London, 1975, Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic, Social and Political Issues.

This chapter demonstrates how the discourse of blight shaped renewal and how the racialization of urban space underpinned housing markets and urban renewal. It talks about Chicago's political and business leaders who worked to turn some of Chicago's blighted land into productive industrial space. It also identifies agency officials who believed that the overhaul of some of Chicago's “waste lands” for industrial redevelopment would reverse decline by delivering jobs, taxes, and prosperity. The chapter describes the new set of industrial lands and the associated set of property relations that emerged out of urban renewal, which were created by all three levels of government and legitimized in the courts. It cites the Housing Act of 1937, which permitted land clearance and slum demolition for public housing and the Housing Act of 1949, which channeled federal funds to cities so that blighted districts could be redeveloped as predominantly residential.

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Irving Louis Horowitz and James Everett Katz, Social Science and Public Policy in the United States, Praeger Publishers, New York, Martin Robertson, London, 1975, Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic, Social, and Political Issues. xiv + 187 pp. £9.10, student edition £3.30; - Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Jeffrey G. Reitz, with the collaboration of Ann K. Pasanella, An introduction to Applied Sociology, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1975. vii + 196 pp. $12.50; - Mirra Komarovsky (ed.), Sociology and Public Policy: The Case, of Presidential Commissions, Elsevier, New York, 1975. vii + 183 pp. $10.95; - Ilene Nagel Bernstein and Howard E. Freeman, Academic and Entrepreneurial Research: The Consequences of Diversity in Federal Evaluation Studies, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1975. xiii + 187 pp. $8.95.

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279400005055 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 433-435

Author(s):

M. D. Shipman

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Public Policy ◽

New York ◽

Social Science ◽

Evaluation Studies ◽

The United States ◽

Russell Sage Foundation ◽

Applied Sociology ◽

Political Issues ◽

Special Studies

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The Politics of Urban Renewal

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875800000943 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 265-280

Author(s):

P. J. Madgwick

Keyword(s):

Title I ◽

Public Housing ◽

Federal Government ◽

Urban Renewal ◽

Residential Development ◽

Living Environment ◽

High Income ◽

American Family ◽

The Poor ◽

Slum Dwellers

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’.

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