Voices for the Future: The Sad and Unfortunate History of Urban Renewal in the U.S.

A Conversation with Public Historian David Hochfelder

Voices for the Future is a podcast series that I co-host with my collaborator Anodea Judith.

The next program is Tuesday, May 9th at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific with the public historian David Hochfelder, and is entitled The Sad and Unfortunate History of Urban Renewal in the U.S.

You can attend for free on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85913557141

Walking through almost any American downtown, you might come across acres of empty space, blocks of parking lots, or places where the architecture shifts dramatically. These are the products of urban renewal. Missing are the people displaced, their homes, and the businesses they once patronized.

Urban renewal in the U.S. began in 1949 and lasted until 1974. Pittsburgh became the first major city to undertake a modern urban renewal program in May 1950, under the powerful influence of multimillionaire R.K. Mellon. 

A large section of downtown at the heart of Pittsburgh was demolished, converted to parks, office buildings, and a sports arena. Other neighborhoods followed suit, and as urban renewal continued in Pittsburgh, neighborhoods became isolated or divided with highways, and large numbers of ethnic and minority residents were removed and displaced. One entire neighborhood was destroyed and replaced by an arena, displacing 8000 residents, most of whom were poor and Black. 

Because of the ways in which it targeted the most disadvantaged sector of the American population, novelist James Baldwin famously dubbed urban renewal "Negro Removal" in the 1960s.

As urban renewal continued throughout the U.S., highways were routed through vibrant neighborhoods, isolating and destroying many along the way. Segregation continued to increase as communities were displaced. Black families that had their homes and neighborhoods destroyed had to find housing options deeper in the inner city while Whites could then use those newly built highways to spread further and further into the suburbs while continuing to work in the city.

Nationally, $20 billion was spent on urban renewal from 1949-1974, and at least 300,000 families and over one million people, mostly poor and minorities, were displaced. Urban renewal was a boon and huge moneymaker for developers, but a disaster for poor people, and is a major factor in creating the cycle of endemic poverty among minorities that continues to this day.

David Hochfelder is associate professor of history and director of the University at Albany's public history program. His current research is a collaborative, public, and digital history of urban renewal, Picturing Urban Renewal, which has won four NEH grants. 

He is working on this project with colleagues Ann Pfau and Stacy Sewell. He is also compiling a statewide inventory of urban renewal records held locally in about 90 municipalities in New York State. This project is also funded by NEH and administered through the New York State Archives. Along with all this, he is a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, which is every bit as fun as it sounds.