Urban Renewal Policy and Community Change

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s federal, state, and local governments worked together to implement policies that expanded the nation's highway systems, encouraged suburban expansion, and funded wholesale clearance projects in so-called slum and depressed inner city areas. These policies created programs that directly affected African Americans in cities all over the United States by targeting older neighborhoods, eliminating affordable (though substandard) housing, dislocating families and extended networks, and replacing what existed with highway overpasses, widened city streets, massive sewer projects, parks, and public housing. The residents of the affected neighborhoods were not involved in the planning, much of which took place years before the programs were implemented, and their voices were not well represented at public hearings. Absentee land owners, who leased properties to African Americans, capitalized on Urban Renewal opportunities, selling their holdings or allowing them to be claimed by condemnation or eminent domain for "fair market values." Those who were displaced had few options for relocation and resettled in other areas where they could find affordable housing, creating new low-income neighborhoods where they were once again tenants of absentee landlords. Traditional services—beauty and barber shops, medical offices and other businesses—were dispersed and people found it harder to conduct business with their friends and neighbors. Streets were broken up by highways, and people without transportation could no longer walk to the traditional business areas. Consumer activity was dispersed to new areas in cities, weakening the African American business foundation and causing many businesses to fail.