With the onset of the Depression in the 1930s, the federal government began exerting greater influence on the city. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal changed the nature of urbanization as the federal government assumed greater responsibility for the well being of Americans. Even though the Depression is often associated with unemployment and hunger, it was also a time when many Americans did not have adequate housing. As a result, FDR supported numerous legislations that illustrated his belief in the paternalistic influence of the federal government in solving many of the problems facing the urban power.
Housing Legislations
By 1932, thousands of Americans lost their homes due to foreclosures. The New Deal addressed this problem by creating the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) in 1934 and the Housing Division within the Public Works Administration (PWA). The FHA insured home loans made by private companies for the construction, repair, and improvement of the nation’s housing stock. The PWA’s Housing Division provided oversight to the development of low rent housing and slum clearance projects.
In 1937, the New Deal introduced the US Housing Authority (USHA) with the Housing Act of September 1937. With the USHA, the federal government began its attacks on urban slums and substandard housing. The Housing Act of 1949 greatly increased slum clearance in cities throughout the country. Unfortunately, urban renewal displaced thousands in the urban core, most of which were poor and of color. While the decay of the urban core was not a new phenomenon, the manner in which the government dealt with it, through slum clearance, aggravated the problem and led to physical confrontations with the police.
As the urban core continued to deteriorate, capitalistic land speculators encouraged suburban growth as a way to escape the problems of the city. These same land speculators also made substantial profits in the urban core. Understanding that the poor could not afford new, suburban-style housing, they had little choice but to pay disproportionately more for what was hardly habitable.
Even though urban renewal legislation mandated that a plan for relocating displaced families be in place before the removal of homes began, many cities did not have one. Furthermore, the unintended reduction of viable urban housing stock that began in the 1950s when combined with massive inner city highway projects “urban renewal” should have been called “Negro removal.”
Capitalism and Suburban Development
Nevertheless, by the end of the 1950s, several factors greatly increased suburbanization, and thereby contributed to the decline of the urban core. First, the Interstate Highway Act provided Federal funds for the construction of interconnected highways throughout the country. While the impetus for an interconnected highway system was national defense, it increased urban mobility and solidified the automobile as its dominant mechanism.
Secondly, the Civil Rights movement sought to end the nature of second-class citizenship for blacks in this country. In particular, the desegregation of public schools caused many whites to flee to the suburbs for what they considered to be “good” schools. In this context, “good” became synonymous with suburban. Urban conflicts were another product of the Civil Rights movement. In the 1960s many black groups abandoned non-violent strategies and engaged white society in head-on confrontations. Again, white America left for the suburbs, hoping to escape the chaos that seemed to threaten everything they valued.
The result left urban neighborhoods that were no longer viable. The principles of capitalism demanded the businesses follow their customer base to the suburbs, while those that remained raised prices higher than those found in the suburbs. The urban renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s left vacant lots scattered throughout neighborhoods. The remaining housing stock continued to deteriorate. Highway construction divided communities leaving a physical barrier that could not be traversed by walking. The resulting economic chaos created by this impenetrable barrier virtually destroyed neighborhood after neighborhood throughout the country. The conflict created by highway placement in the 1950s and 1960s as those economic and social institutions that deteriorated due to a lack of support have yet to reappear more than 40 years later.
While FDR’s New Deal legislation introduced policies designed to help the urban poor, some were used to further alienate them. The unintended policies of urban renewal and the interstate highways actually reinforced the racist undertones that exist in American society. Even though FDR believed the federal government could solve the economic problems of the urban poor through paternalistic policies, he failed to address the numerous racial problems they faced daily.
References:
Beauregard, Robert (1993). Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities. Blackwell: Oxford UK and Cambridge USA
