The Failure of Urban Renewal in the Southwest: From City Needs to Individual Rights

Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal in the United States

“…State enabling legislation permitted and set legal parameters for the creation of local public agencies (LPAs) that could exercise eminent domain to acquire property for private redevelopment, a key element of the urban renewal process. This legislation was crucial to the implementation of federally funded urban renewal projects and is often cited in the early social science literature that considers cross-city differences in funding (e.g., Straits 1965, Plott 1968, and Bingham 1975, in historical accounts of urban renewal initiatives (e.g., Teaford 1990, Fairbanks 2002and 2006, Germany 2007, in considerations of the program's legal aspects (e.g., Sogg andWertheimer 1959, Pritchett 2003), and in urban planning publications (e.g., see Greer Given that enabling legislation was a prerequisite to federally funded urban renewal, that political opposition to the program increased with time, that there was learning-by-doing in formulating project proposals, and that new funding halted in 1974, a delay in enabling legislation would narrow a city's window of opportunity for urban renewal efforts. There is historical evidence that state legislative delays constrained the participation of cities that wanted to undertake urban renewal.…”

“…Earlier versions of this paper did not make any of these adjustments to the AA data and obtained similar results. Columns 2 and 3 are based on our independent collection of information on the earliest and latest dates of state enabling legislation from the Book of the States (Council of State Governments, various years), the Journal of Housing (various years), U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency (1958 and 1962), Forman (1969), Fairbanks (2006), Johnson and Tashman (2002), and Graham (2007), where we sought direct confirmation of the original AA coding. In South Carolina, amendments allowing urban renewal with private redevelopment for some places were passed as late as 1973, but those later amendments were not binding on cities in our dataset.…”

Slum Clearance and Urban Renewal in the United States

“…State enabling legislation permitted and set legal parameters for the creation of local public agencies (LPAs) that could exercise eminent domain to acquire property for private redevelopment, a key element of the urban renewal process. This legislation was crucial to the implementation of federally funded urban renewal projects and is often cited in the early social science literature that considers cross-city differences in funding (e.g., Straits 1965, Plott 1968, and Bingham 1975, in historical accounts of urban renewal initiatives (e.g., Teaford 1990, Fairbanks 2002and 2006, Germany 2007, in considerations of the program's legal aspects (e.g., Sogg andWertheimer 1959, Pritchett 2003), and in urban planning publications (e.g., see Greer and Hansen 1941 and issues of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials' Journal of Housing). Archival material indicates that HHFA (HUD's predecessor) closely monitored the development of enabling legislation because it determined cities' ability to participate in the program.…”

Introduction to Special Issue on Urban Renewal in Smaller Cities

“…8 Other recent work has drawn attention to the role of urban renewal in increasing local planning and administrative capacity in both large and small cities. 9 While there is less research on smaller cities than larger, recent publications suggest how we might compare these scales in the context of urban renewal. In smaller cities, opportunities to live in less definitively "urban" environments are often easier to come by.…”