Urban Renewal’s Record Shows It Wasn’t All Bad
Tossed into the dustbin of history more than a generation ago, the concept of urban renewal, long derided as “Negro removal,” is getting a second look.
The program began in 1950 and was scrapped in 1974, by then thoroughly discredited as unfair and unworkable. In the national war on blight, the poor were disproportionately targeted for eviction from dilapidated downtowns to make way for parks, office buildings, sports arenas, and high-rise apartments. But a new study for the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that urban renewal, or slum clearance, had some lasting positive effects on economic growth.
William J. Collins, an economist and historian at Vanderbilt University, and Katharine L. Shester, an economist at Washington and Lee University, looked at family incomes, property values and population growth in about 460 American cities for 1950 and 1980. The cities they chose encompassed the vast majority of urban renewal projects. Overall, the economists found, the longer cities participated in the program and the more federal funding they received, the bigger and better off they became, with no net loss of black residents.
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Collins and Shester acknowledge that the program placed a heavy burden on the poor, but they conclude that it had sizable economic impacts at the city level. At a time when the federal government is much less involved in funding large-scale urban projects, Collins said, “it is remarkable to look back to an era when slums were a national policy priority.”
http://www.miller-mccune.com/business-economics/urban-renewals-record-shows-it-wasnt-all-bad-39154/