Urban renewal

Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in British English) is a movement in urban planning that reached its peak in the United States from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. It has had a massive impact on the urban landscape and continues to the present day. It has also played an important role in cities worldwide, such as Saint John, New Brunswick, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, and Bilbao, Spain.

Reactions against urban renewal

In 1961, Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of the first?and strongest?critiques of contemporary large-scale urban renewal. However, it would still be a few years before organized movements began to oppose urban renewal.

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In 1964, the Civil Rights Act removed racial deed restrictions on housing. This led to the beginnings of desegregation of residential neighborhoods, but redlining continued to mean that real estate agents continued to steer ethnic minorities to certain areas. The riots that swept cities across the country from 1965 to 1967 damaged or destroyed additional areas of major cities?most drastically in Detroit during the 12th Street Riot.

Related Topics:
Civil Rights Act - Desegregation - Riots - 1965 - 1967 - Detroit - 12th Street Riot

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By the 1970s many major cities developed opposition to the sweeping urban-renewal plans for their cities. In Boston, community activists halted construction of the proposed Southwest Expressway?but only after a three-mile long stretch of land had been cleared. In San Francisco, Joseph Alioto was the first mayor to publicly repudiate the policy of urban renewal, and with the backing of community groups, forced the state to end construction of highways through the heart of the city. Between 1956 and 1966, more than 12% of the people in Atlanta lost their homes to urban renewal, expressways, and a downtown building boom turned the city into the showcase of the New South in the 1970s and 1980s.

Related Topics:
1970s - San Francisco - Atlanta - New South - 1980s

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