In 1966 the federal government enacted the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act, commonly known as model cities. In large part, the federal program was based on programs being tried in New Haven Connecticut by Mayor Richard “Dick” Lee (1954-1970). Mayor Lee championed the efforts of urban renewal and creating a model for other cities to follow. Sadly, many cities did.
A few years ago Yale did a nice look at the era and produced an exhibit and website. From the site:
The Ideology of Redevelopment
Urban renewal offered a chance for architects, city planners, and other experts to enact their ideal vision of a city. New Haven became a testing group for top-down, Modernist theories of urban design. Instead of neighborhoods in which the people lived, shopped, and worked, planners wanted to separate housing, retail, and industrial uses. Dense, irregular city streets gave way to highways to accommodate the automobile.
Especially in the first years of urban renewal, planners thought that new buildings would make new people: that renewing the city physically would solve the problems of poverty, unemployment, and racial antagonism. As the 1960s progressed, it became clear that these difficulties would not be overcome solely with new construction alone, and the Lee Administration pioneered a number of social programs.
The arguments were pretty much the same from city to city. To solve problems we must erase the past. To many the slums were home. One of those interviewed for the exhibit said this, “You could classify Oak Street back then as a slum, but it was a thriving slum…â€
This was the part the planners and architects of the era failed to understand. These slums may not have had hot water or toilets but they had good human interaction, an economy, and local services for residents. The slums were functional, unlike the projects that replaced them.
The Yale site, in one section, said:
President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Labor called New Haven’s efforts “the greatest success story in the history of the world.†But by the end of his tenure, Lee said regularly, “If New Haven is a model city, God help America’s cities.â€Â
Indeed. Mayor Lee realized, by 1970, the failure of the urban renewal programs in New Haven yet they continued throughout the USA. In the early 1970s, the model cities program was folding into the new CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) program. Unfortunately, many planners and architects trained in this way of thinking are still in positions of power. We’ve not fully learned the lessons of the past.
The Yale site called, Life in the Model City: Stories of Urban Renewal from New Haven, is highly recommended.
