National Urban Renewal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Klemek
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Neighborhood Politics ◽  
American Cities

Urban renewal refers to an interlocking set of national and local policies, programs, and projects, implemented in the vast majority of American cities between 1949 and 1973. These typically entailed major redevelopment of existing urban areas with a view to the modernization of housing, highway infrastructure, commercial and business districts, as well as other large-scale constructions. Reformers from the Progressive Era through the Great Society strove to ameliorate the conditions of poverty and inequality in American cities by focusing primarily on physical transformation of the urban built environment. Citing antecedents such as the reconstruction of Second Empire Paris, imported via the City Beautiful movement, and then updated with midcentury modernism, US urban planners envisioned a radical reorganization of city life. In practice, federal programs and local public authorities targeted the eradication of areas deemed slums or blighted—often as much to socially sanitize neighborhoods inhabited by racial minorities and other marginalized groups as to address deteriorating physical conditions. And while federal funding became available for public works projects in declining central cities under the auspices of improving living conditions for the poor—including providing public housing—urban renewal programs consistently destroyed more affordable housing than they created, over more than three decades. By the end of the 1960s, urban residents and policymakers across the political spectrum concluded that such programs were usually doing more harm than good, and most ended during the Nixon administration. Yet large-scale reminders of urban renewal can still be found in most large US communities, whether in the form of mid-20th-century public housing blocks, transportation projects, stadiums, convention centers, university and hospital expansions, or a variety of public-private redevelopment initiatives. But perhaps the most fundamental legacies of all were the institutionalization of the comprehensive zoning and master planning process in cities nationwide, on the one hand, and the countervailing mobilization of defensively oriented (NIMBY) neighborhood politics, on the other.

Urban regeneration as a perpetual planning process: Understanding the role of stakeholders in property-led regeneration projects in Greek cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athena Yiannakou
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Process Understanding ◽  
Strongly Connected ◽  
Urban Planning And Development ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

Urban regeneration has been at the forefront of urban planning and development in European cities for many decades and is strongly connected to property-led development, with the involvement of various stakeholders. In Greece, urban regeneration, as a public policy response to large-scale abandonment and dereliction of urban land, has not been successful so far. The Greek planning system and its provisions for renewal of degraded urban areas have for long been regarded as an obstacle to the implementation of urban regeneration projects. The reform of the planning system in the 2010s introduced some critical changes, with an emphasis on larger-scale development, but with no particular focus on urban regeneration. Using two case studies of regeneration projects in the city of Thessaloniki, this paper attempts to provide an insight into the role of the various stakeholders in such projects. It is argued that in these projects, each stakeholder, irrespective of its character, acts as distinct interest group which develops only binary relations with other stakeholders. Thus, the regeneration project becomes a platform upon which each stakeholder aims to secure its power, instead of a coordinated multi-stakeholder process with a framework for sharing the costs and benefits of its implementation.

scholarly journals A Marvelous Machine: Creative Approaches to Securing Funding and Building Public Support for Streetcar Projects in Four U.S. Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (1) ◽  
pp. 369-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Wood ◽  
Jeffrey R. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Light Rail ◽  
Civic Leaders ◽  
History Of ◽  
Funding Environment ◽  
American Cities

The resurgence of streetcars in American cities has presented planners and civic leaders with a novel means of transportation and redevelopment for cities, many of which have a history of failed regional transit votes and suburban domination of regional planning bodies. To overcome these political and financial obstacles, supporters have engaged in a host of creative strategies to satisfy or bypass streetcar critics. Using a case study of four American cities with recently built streetcars (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Tucson), this paper explores these strategies from the perspective of streetcar supporters. Results indicate streetcar projects in these cities were pursued in part because each city had faced at least one failed rail-transit vote in recent years (usually involving light rail). Supporters of streetcar plans anticipated vocal citizen opposition based on those past failures; however, in most cases this did not materialize to the expected degree. This suggests that narrowly focused and lower-cost streetcar projects can avoid the contentious opposition of pricey regional light-rail proposals by offering a different product and/or seeking fewer local dollars. Results also indicate widespread distrust for regional planning structures and a willingness of local boosters to bypass those entities and apply directly for federal funds. Although not all four cities ended up with the streetcar they envisioned, the findings nevertheless document an eagerness on the part of proponents to seek transit projects that transform public opinion, circumvent a burdensome regional planning process, and take advantage of a national funding environment willing to fund streetcars in urban areas.

scholarly journals Urban Renewal in American Cities and Responses of the White Working-Class Ethnic Groups: A Preliminary Exploration

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3 (181)) ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
White Ethnic ◽  
American Cities

In the post-World War II decades, urban renewal became a part of the larger vision for the revitalization of American cities. Between 1949 and 1974, federal legislation provided a legal and economic framework for demolition of so-called blighted areas and replacing them with new modern housing, infrastructure, and facilities for services and commerce. It was a response to the perceived urban crisis: a move of city residents to the suburbs and collapse of the tax base, congestion of urban areas, and aging urban infrastructure. The areas slated for demolition or highway construction belonged often to communities of color and to older urban working-class white ethnic communities. This article examines the responses of various white ethnic groups, including American Polonia, to the local plans of urban renewal, which ranged from apathy, to acceptance and support, to internal mobilization and protest, to coalition building and political action.

Urban Politics in the United States since 1945

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lily Geismer
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
American Cities

Urban politics provides a means to understand the major political and economic trends and transformations of the last seventy years in American cities. The growth of the federal government; the emergence of new powerful identity- and neighborhood-based social movements; and large-scale economic restructuring have characterized American cities since 1945. The postwar era witnessed the expansion of scope and scale of the federal government, which had a direct impact on urban space and governance, particularly as urban renewal fundamentally reshaped the urban landscape and power configurations. Urban renewal and liberal governance, nevertheless, spawned new and often violent tensions and powerful opposition movements among old and new residents. These movements engendered a generation of city politicians who assumed power in the 1970s. Yet all of these figures were forced to grapple with the larger forces of capital flight, privatization, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, immigration, and gentrification. This confluence of factors meant that as many American cities and their political representatives became demographically more diverse by the 1980s and 1990s, they also became increasingly separated by neighborhood boundaries and divided by the forces of class and economic inequality.

PROBLEMS OF LARGE-SCALE HOUSING CONSTRUCTION IN RUSSIA

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktor P. GENERALOV ◽  
Elena M. GENERALOVA
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Housing Construction ◽  
General Strategy ◽  
Regulatory Documents ◽  
Stage Development

In this article stage-by-stage development of large-scale housing in the territory of Russia before 1990 and stagnation in the last ten years caused by absence of general strategy of living environment amenities is viewed. Problems of elaboration of affordable housing new standards are explored, existing regulatory documents are analyzed. In that context Hong Kong experience in large-scale public housing is given as an example.

Public Housing in Urban America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bradford Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Urban America ◽  
New Urbanist ◽  
The 1960S

Public housing emerged during the New Deal as a progressive effort to end the scourge of dilapidated housing in American cities. Reformers argued that the private market had failed to provide decent, safe, and affordable housing, and they convinced Congress to provide deep subsidies to local housing authorities to build and manage modern, low-cost housing projects for the working poor. Well-intentioned but ultimately misguided policy decisions encouraged large-scale developments, concentrated poverty and youth, and starved public housing of needed resources. Further, the antipathy of private interests to public competition and the visceral resistance of white Americans to racial integration saddled public housing with many enemies and few friends. While residents often formed tight communities and fought for improvements, stigmatization and neglect undermined the success of many projects; a sizable fraction became disgraceful and tangible symbols of systemic racism toward the nation’s African American poor. Federal policy had few answers and retreated in the 1960s, eventually making a neoliberal turn to embrace public-private partnerships for delivering affordable housing. Housing vouchers and tax credits effectively displaced the federal public housing program. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration encouraged the demolition and rebuilding of troubled projects using vernacular “New Urbanist” designs to house “mixed-income” populations. Policy problems, political weakness, and an ideology of homeownership in the United States meant that a robust, public-centered program of housing for use rather than profit could not be sustained.

Brighton Fair: The Life, Death, and Legacy of an Animal Suburb

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422110181
Author(s):  
Andrew Robichaud
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Many ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Social Landscapes ◽  
Insight Into

This paper explores the development and legacy of nineteenth-century “animal suburbs,” focusing on Boston and Brighton, Massachusetts. As domesticated animals were pushed from downtowns—and as large-scale animal industries emerged in the 1800s—urban areas grappled with what to do with livestock populations for urban consumers and markets. Animal suburbs like Brighton marked important developmental forms—marking key changes in human-animal relationships, and also in urban development, law, politics, and environmental change. These animal suburbs had distinctive built environments, ecologies, economies, and social landscapes that shaped development in the nineteenth century and in the many decades that followed. This paper explores the life and death of one animal suburb—Brighton—and shows the centrality of these marginal spaces in explaining why parts of American cities look the way they do today, while also providing insight into developments of nineteenth-century law, political development, and capitalism.

Design and Civic Identity in Cincinnati's Carew Tower Complex

1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Edward W. Wolner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Local History ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
Political Patronage ◽  
The One ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Rockefeller Center

John J. Emery's Carew Tower complex in Cincinnati, Ohio, was an unusual example in the 1920s of the congruence between progressive skyscraper design and planning on the one hand, and progressive social and political tendencies on the other. Although its massing and major ornamental motifs were derived from other work in the decade by French and American designers, it nevertheless exhibited a spatial and circulatory originality unmatched by office buildings, hotels, or mixed-use skyscrapers prior to Rockefeller Center. More fully than any other skyscraper development between 1920 and 1935, the Carew Tower complex integrated significant aspects of local history with the architectural sophistication and the large-scale technological and organizational innovations generally identified with New York City and Chicago. At the same time, in an era when boss rule and political patronage dominated the governments of most large American cities, Emery and the Carew Tower complex were integrally associated with the extensive programs of public works and governmental reforms instituted in Cincinnati between 1924 and 1936.

Urban Renewal, Public Housing and the Racial Shaping of Atlanta

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald H. Bayor
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Central City ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Business Activity ◽  
Downtown Area ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
American Cities ◽  
The City

A number of American cities experienced urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Historians and others who have chronicled the urban changes of those decades have cited economic redevelopment as the motivating factor in the rebuilding of the downtown and the relocation of the black population from that area. For example, Carl Abbott in his analysis of Sunbelt cities noted that “the rebuilding of downtown districts was intended to secure two related economic goals.” The first was to make the city more appealing as a center of investment and business activity as opposed to competing cities; the second was to enhance the downtown area in light of suburban development which might attract business away from the central city. Clarence Stone-in his study of Atlanta's renewal also indicates the primacy of economic factors as the motivation for rebuilding the city's downtown and uprooting the black population.

"In the Nature of a Clinic": The Design of Early Public Housing in St. Louis

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Heathcott
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Works ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Home Building ◽  
History Of

Several important episodes in the early history of mass housing in America are the subject of "In the Nature of a Clinic": The Design of Early Public Housing in St. Louis. In the late 1920s housing and reform advocates coalesced out of the strong St. Louis settlement house to push for slum clearance and large-scale home building for the working class. Their first achievement, Joseph Heathcott reports, was Neighborhood Gardens, completed in 1934 with funding from the Public Works Administration. Modern in architectural design and segregated in social plan, the project established a model for the larger undertakings inspired by the landmark 1937 Housing Act. By World War II, housing advocates and officials in St. Louis had created prototypes of a new urban form that would shape postwar activities, including the notorious Pruitt-Igoe.

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