1949: Urban Renewal
To address so-called “urban blight” in the United States, the federal government, in coordination with states and cities, passed the Housing Act of 1949. This act was the first in a series of policies that “were designed to provide the money for retooling the city, preparing for the postwar era, and switching from the war machine to a new means of productivity” (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 57). Thompson Fullilove (2016) found that “once those [i.e., blighted] areas had been defined, the city had the task of developing a ‘workable plan’… once the plan was approved, the designated areas could be seized by using the government’s power of eminent domain” (p. 58).
Baltimore’s Abandoned Neighborhoods
Source: Technically, Creative Commons
After the land was seized and its occupants—mostly African American occupants—displaced, cities then partnered with developers to build “businesses, educational and cultural institutions, and residences for middle- and upper-income white people. In some instances, high-rise public housing projects were built on the cleared land” (p. 59).
“Urban blight” became yet another euphemism that gave white politicians and commercial developers access to areas of the city deemed valuable for economic development. Despite representing some of the city’s most depressed residents in need of revitalization, African Americans were pushed out, relocated to another depressed area of the city, and left in the same if not worse circumstances.