Urban Redevelopment

Urban Renewal

The Housing Act of 1949 launched the first and largest national urban redevelopment initiative: urban renewal. The Act had strong support from real estate developers and advocates for affordable housing for the poor. Both groups noted that private investment in housing had been minimal during the Great Depression and World War II. The result was a severe housing shortage and widespread overcrowding that exacerbated deterioration of the old and often outdated housing stock. Conditions were viewed as being especially grim in large cities of the Northeast and Midwest that had drawn migrants to work in wartime industries and that continued to draw migrants in large numbers as the mechanization of Southern agriculture pushed rural workers, including large numbers of African American workers, off the land.

Strong support for the act also came from a somewhat unlikely coalition of big city mayors (mainly Democratic) and corporate interests (mainly [Page 759]Republican) committed to shoring up the central city's eroding tax base by redeveloping the central business district (CBD). It included large downtown business interests that valued their proximity to CBD services and cultural amenities; officials of major institutions such as banks, newspapers, and utilities that felt they “had” to stay downtown; and major retailers who thought it was still possible to rebuild the CBD as a prime retail destination.

Downtown's problems were formidable. The building stock and infrastructure of the CBD had been built to the streetscape that predated the automobile and the truck. Like the nation's housing stock, downtown had seen no new investment in 15 years, and its retail and office space were technologically outdated. Retailing began to suffer badly as suburban competition grew, fueled by the introduction of the shopping mall in the early 1950s. Rapidly suburbanizing middle- and upper-income shoppers were viewed as being psychologically “cut off” from downtown's shopping and entertainment venues by an expanding ring of impoverished, mostly African American neighborhoods beset by social ills.

Redevelopment was seen as the way to lure back the tax base, including both middle- and upper-income residents and commercial and retail activities. This would include creating a new template for the physical space to make it as attractive and car-friendly as the suburbs. Blight elimination was critical: It would make the city more attractive, address the problem of rising central city crime, and create larger parcels of land that would attract development.

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