An evaluation of the urban renewal experience in the USA

Abstract

It is now thirty years -roughly a generation -since major urban renewal legislation was enacted in the USA. This legislation was a logical outgrowth of national involvement in the related fields of housing and home finance, and of municipal efforts to improve urban living conditions by means of housing and building codes, zoning ordinances and overall city planning. Deteriorated sections of the cities had grown rapidly as a result of wide inequalities in income, fed by the infusion of poor and unskilled immigrants from domestic rural areas and from foreign countries. The great economic depression of the 1930s intensified these problems by reducing family incomes, pressing municipal finances to the brink of bankruptcy (and often beyond it) and rendering private investment cautious to the point of paralysis. World War II, which brought death and destruction on a massive scale, was met in its latter years by a resolution to avoid the cumulative mistakes of the past and to seek a body of public policy that would enable cities to be built or rebuilt in a coherent, efficient and attractive manner. Although the USA suffered no war damage, it too was swept up in the world-wide enthusiasm for post-War planning. Congressional hearings were held as early as 1944, and five years later the Housing Act of 1949, the landmark legislation in city rebuilding in the USA, was written into law.