The record of legislation has been spread over the last 30 years. It has taken that long to move slum clearance programmes into a much broader approach to the whole problem of urban affairs. But slow as this record is, legislation has kept ahead of local government action which has been retarded by a slum clearance mentality. This article examines the 'renewal balance sheet'.
Urban renewal
the American experiment
URBAN renewal in the United States finds its beginnings in the Franklin Roosevelt era.
With its sponsored public housing limited though this was the New Deal was the catalyst needed to spark off a concerted effort to improve physical conditions in the American city, which was at that time an offence to upper class sensibilities and a com- pound of social inequalities.
The first aim of Roosevelt's grand design was to pump life into the public section of the economy and the second was to clear away the worst areas of depression.
Several renewal experiments were tried around the time of the US Housing Act of 1937, among them being the neighbourhood conserva- tion' movement and the attempts at unsubsidised 'rehabilitation' by private builders. Tangible reward however is the necessary booster to all but the most civic minded. Well intentioned people often conceive schemes based on the public spiritedness of a neigh bourhood; yet it is the very absence of this spirit which has allowed the situa- tion to develop in the first place. Thus public housing has prevailed and neigh- bourhood action groups come and go sporadically.
It was in the early 1940's that the real urban renewal movement began, when governmental powers of clearance were extended beyond public housing to any other private re-use. Many state laws were passed and finally, in 1949, the Housing Act made federal funds available. Along with the funds came rules and red tape to safeguard as well as to control their distribution.
Paralleling the movement in this decade were experiments in building code enforcement. Improvements to the codes themselves and to accounting procedures were also made and renewal from the early thirties until this time has been marked by a growth in plan- ning effectuation techniques, such as
the evolution of Zoning and Capital Improvement Programming.
The Housing Act of 1954, produced by a president's committee promul- gated urban renewal as a means of co- ordinating all the above instruments - with federal aid for some, conditional upon the local community sharing the expenses. More recent times have seen the growth of the 221D3 Housing Programme for middle income groups along with diversified programmes for the lower income groups, notably rent supplements and Turn-Key.
These latter two efforts take ac- count of public sensitivity to low cost housing and the growing expense of producing it. In the case of rent supple- ments, in broad terms, a recepient who spends more than a fixed proportion of his income on rent may have the amount or excess of this proportion refunded, thus allowing the poor to be located inconspicuously in market rate housing.
This direct expenditure, under the 221D3 programme reflects the growing awareness of the costs to the builder of red tape, inherent in the costs of public housing. It has been found cheaper and more expedient when actually building low cost housing to directly negotiate standards and re- quirements of public housing, then have the developer build and the Housing Authority simply purchase directly on the housing market. This directly on the housing market. This avoids delay and expense when pay- ments depend upon the efficiency of the beaurocracy.
by Terence P. Byrnes
The hitherto limited programmes of physical renewal and the negative aspects of the federal machine have inspired the recent development of the Model Cities programme. The Model Cities Bill was passed into law last year; it moves urban renewal from a narrow programme of slum clearance to a broad frontal assault on the whole problem of urban affairs.
Significantly, this attitude towards comprehensiveness, powered by local imagination, has been further redirect- ed towards 'citizen participation' fol- lowing the widespread urban distur- bances during 1967/68, the time when the actual programme sidelines were being formulated. Comprehensiveness in these terms is seen not just as the co-ordinating of related government programmes, but as the broader co- ordination of shared responsibilities between government and its citizens.
Credits and debits
In 1937, George Orwell commented that the destruction of the slums also destroyed other things as well. It is these other things that have proved so so elusive in the efforts made to date at finding out how renewal can best operate. On the credit side the gains have been mostly physical; on the debit side the losses have been an emphasis of social inequalities.
It would appear however that there is a growing tendency to compensate for some of the indifference shown in the past, particularly through the in- sensitive actions of some local govern- ment officials. Real or otherwise these injustices are sought to be rectified by more meetings with local people in the environment of their own neighbour- hoods.
In the case of Hartford, Connecti- cut, a local predominantly black neigh- bourhood was able to sit down once a week at a meeting in their neighbour- hood, advertised previously in the newspapers, to discuss with local
Far East BUILDER, May 1969
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