Model Cities

History

The immediate origins of the Model Cities program can be traced back to the Mobilization for Youth, a late-1950s anti-delinquency project on Manhattan's Lower East Side. By 1961 and 1962, this and other private philanthropic initiatives became part of the [Page 485]Grey Areas program of the Ford Foundation under the leadership of Paul Ylvisaker, which entailed grants to neighborhood improvement organizations in Boston, New Haven, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Another precursor was the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, which combined community participation with anti-poverty programs via the Office of Economic Opportunity's Community Action Program.

The federal Model Cities initiative—advanced by National Institute of Health psychiatrist Leonard Duhl, Tufts University Dean Antonia Chayes, and Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh—coalesced in 1964 around the idea of “an urban TVA” that would simultaneously tackle an area's social, economic, political, and physical problems. Cavanaugh and Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers, lobbied President Lyndon Johnson to designate Detroit as America's Demonstration City.

A series of presidential task forces charged with offering solutions to metropolitan and urban problems were chaired by Robert C. Wood, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meeting before and after the 1964 election, the task forces first pushed for the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (achieved in 1965) and then took up the Demonstration Cities concept. Wood saw an opportunity for an innovative administrative break from policies like welfare, which theoretically redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor, and entitlement programs available to all eligible claimants in a category (e.g., veterans, retirees). Instead, a new kind of social policy would selectively award grants based on merit. First conceived to include only a handful of urban sites, the program was soon reimagined—mostly to gain necessary congressional support—as a nationwide program encompassing smaller towns and large cities.

As the new HUD administrators were appointed in 1966, President Johnson directed them to make passage of Model Cities their centerpiece initiative, declaring it his top legislative priority. The urban task force's report became the draft of a bill requesting $2.3 billion to provide select cities with “comprehensive assistance” in a range of areas, from education to housing.

Although that was not its intention, the program was widely viewed as a major policy response to the previous summer's riots in the Watts community of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Some lawmakers opposed the bill for what they believed was a reward for violence; others saw it as a preventative against future incidents. After a Georgia congressman worried that the title Demonstration Cities could be interpreted to endorse rioting, the name was changed to Model Cities.

The bill also faced opposition from many established urban officials (among them, mayors and housing and renewal administrators) who felt threatened by the new agency. Just as critical were those, including Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Abraham Ribicoff, who blasted Model Cities for its tokenism and called for a much larger “Marshall Plan for cities.” But with pressure from the president and the support of Senate sponsors Edmund Muskie and Frank Barrett, the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act, authorizing $1.2 billion (with amendments reducing funds to $900 million over 2 years) was signed into law on November 3, 1966.

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