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One of my parent's friends grew up in this neighborhood. Was working class Jewish at the time, used to literally elect Socialists. Brownsville, Brooklyn 1962:
No. There was some, ah, "discussion" about whether the demolished housing was actually substandard, or if that was simply a "value judgement".
I'm not sure why discussion gets scare quotes. Besides, whether the demolished housing was substandard or not, new housing did not have to be low density and autocentric. It could have taken a completely different form.
One of my additions to the "discussion" was a mention of the West End, Boston. Old photos look similar to the North End. The North End is considered one of the more "special" parts of Boston and is certainly not slum-like today. If a very similar next door neighborhood is fine today, why wouldn't the demolished one be as well? Rehab could have been done to the West End, perhaps for a similar cost to the demolition. Here are some images of the West End:
Some of the demolition is from building wide boulevards and expressways through the city center. Did they really belong there?
The residents preferred their "slum":
Between one quarter and one half of the former residents were relocated substandard housing with higher rents than they were previously paying. Approximately 40% also suffer from severe long term grief reactions.
And the city used misleading tactics to create impression of a slum:
the city stopped collecting garbage and cleaning the streets leaving the neighborhood a mess.[4] A photographer for a local newspaper was even assigned to go to the West End, overturn a trashcan, and take a picture of it to create the impression of a blighted neighborhood.
Well, my writing style notwithstanding, much of that housing was replaced with public housing projects. A lot of those turned out not so great either, but at least they met the building codes.
That sort of thing was pretty common: some of the buildings demolished as "blighted and substandard" where I live were 10-20 years old. The local papers carried out a multi-year smear campain of "exposes" to make the neighborhood look bad, but the Chamber of Commerce backed public bond measures still lost two public votes. Tax-increment financing replaced the need for a public bond, the large nonwhite population got the boot from downtown and Chamber of Commerce construction firms and businesses cleaned up in more way than one!
Well, my writing style notwithstanding, much of that housing was replaced with public housing projects. A lot of those turned out not so great either, but at least they met the building codes.
The projects that were constructed in the late 40s Early 50s were funded 100% by the federal government. Te Feds Allocated $0 for their maintenance. In essence, they were designed to fail.
Well, my writing style notwithstanding, much of that housing was replaced with public housing projects. A lot of those turned out not so great either, but at least they met the building codes.
Well in my West End example, upscale high rises were built in the place. A large hospital (largest in New England) is also on the site, but that was built later. The residents were happy with where they were living. I don't know what condition the housing in the West End was, and as I said earlier, the adjacent neighborhood had done well and is much more pleasant to walk through than the renewed West End. I think in that case, calling the demolished neighborhood "substandard" was a value judgement.
The projects that were constructed in the late 40s Early 50s were funded 100% by the federal government. Te Feds Allocated $0 for their maintenance. In essence, they were designed to fail.
Are you sure? I thought many if not most were constructed by city or state funds.
I suppose suburbanites worried about being ejected from their homes and into substandard high-rise housing has some precedent--that's exactly what happened in urban downtowns in the Fifties in some cities--neighborhood demolished and replaced with public housing, but that housing wasn't adequately maintained, and the economic basis of the neighborhoods (the businesses and workplaces destroyed by demolition along with the housing) was gone, which meant many in this new housing were stuck without employment alternatives nearby. While many of these projects were new and shiny, they were often horribly badly designed--like elevators that only stopped once every seven floors, or towers designed with "green space" that nobody used because of poor pedestrian design because the complex was designed to be seen from the air, not walked around on the ground.
And that's if they were lucky--many urban clearance programs didn't provide any replacement housing, so the displaced persons just had to crowd into whatever neighborhoods that were nearby--or ended up on the street. Generally one unit of public housing was built for every four demolished.
All this was happening while new suburbs sprouted up all over, funded by highway construction projects, FHA and VA loans, rural electrification and water infrastructure funds, etcetera. But the folks displaced from downtowns generally couldn't buy there--most were racially restricted and thus unavailable to nonwhites, who also had a harder time getting VA or FHA loans too, even if they had jobs good enough to afford what was now within far easier reach of middle-class whites.
Are you sure? I thought many if not most were constructed by city or state funds.
Depends on the project--some were originally started during the Depression as New Deal era housing or federally-funded veterans' housing. The redevelopment acts in the late 40s and early 50s provided government-backed funds (the feds paid two-thirds of the acquisition costs, and provided loans to cities) to build public housing. The construction was often done with city, county or state authority, but federal funds were an important component. Some were a mixture--Chicago's Cabrini-Green was a mixture of Depression-era relief housing (the two-story Cabrini townhomes) and postwar Le Corbusier-style towers in the park (the high-rise Green.)
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