Urban Renewal: a Comparative Study of Twenty-Two Cities, 1950-1960

Abstract

N HIS ARTICLE, "An Analysis of Public Policies in Cities," Froman states, "If policies are to be taken out of the 'problem-oriented,' 'case study,' and often 'normative' framework in which they are now found and raised to the level of scientific inquiry, then policy categories must be developed and related to other phenomena."' That statement epitomizes the research goal of this study: to provide a glimpse into the nature and complexity of urban renewal in the 1950's by examining selected projects in a systematic, comparative manner. In other words, this study of twenty-two cities, which started urban renewal programs under the original Housing Act of 1949, is an attempt to take urban renewal out of the "problem-oriented," "case study," and "normative" framework and to put it in a comparative framework which enables various urban renewal projects to be investigated simultaneously. While only seven of the thirty-eight projects that were examined in this study had been completed on December 31, 1959,2 and while most of the projects were approximately 65 percent finished on that date, using the last federal expenditure as a crude index of project completion,3 this study seemed worthwhile for two primary reasons. First, if "policy categories must be developed and related to other phenomena," as Froman suggests, then the use of demographic, economic, and political data from the United States Censuses and The Municipal Yearbooks seems most appropriate. Second, the 1950 Housing Census (Block Statistics) and the 1960 Census of Housing (City Blocks) provide excellent comparative data sources. Indeed, it is ironic that most analysts of urban renewal have conducted "problemoriented," "case study," and "normative" investigations rather than aggregate data