A City without Slums: Urban Renewal; Public Housing and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 2001  by Kevin Fox Gotham

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As these excerpts show, residents were familiar with the dislocating effects of urban renewal, the devastating impact of the program on inner city neighborhoods, and efforts of local groups and activists to halt the disruption of neighborhoods. In addition to the displacement of residential neighborhoods, a number of residents remembered how small business owners were forced to move to make way for parking lots and redevelopment for larger, nationally-based businesses. For some residents, the loss of small businesses and neighborhood grocery stores was equally traumatic as the displacement of people and houses was. Urban renewal not only dislocated residents but disrupted entire neighborhoods as residents were now forced to travel outside their neighborhoods to obtain groceries, clothes, and other services.

In Kansas City and other cities, urban renewal and public housing worked at cross-purposes with one another. The former displaced poor residents from their housing while the later concentrated them into crowded and deteriorating neighborhoods. No matter how much government officials proclaimed the Housing Act of 1949 to be a policy for a "decent home in a suitable living environment," the consequences of urban renewal were the removal of housing and the concentration of the poor in the central city. Different groups of actors had different motivations in attacking the problems of urban blight and obsolescence but effect was the same. Urban renewal officials and private real estate interests were motivated by profits and economic gain and public housing administrators segregated displaced residents in a racially unequal fashion. In many cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, blacks bore the burden of the dislocating effects of urban renewal, as local authorities converted slum clearance into "Negro clearance" along the very lines black leaders had feared (Gelfand 1975, p. 212; Hirsch 1983, 2000). Other ethnic groups suffered as well, including predominantly Italian-American residents in Boston's West End (Gans 1962) and Mexican-Americans in the Bunker Hill neighborhood in Los Angeles (Hines 1982). Although racial discrimination and segregation undoubtedly played a major role in shaping the experience of blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities, they remained closely intertwined with class. The urban poor of all races and ethnic groups were more likely to be displaced than those blacks and other minority groups living in affluent and upscale neighborhoods. Racial motivations on the part of government officials and profit motivations on the part of private developers combined to transform the central city and cement patterns of racial and class segregation in the postwar metropolis.

V

Discussion and Conclusion

IN SUM, THE TWO DECADES AFTER 1950 REPRESENTED AN ERA of slum clearance and public housing that dramatically transformed Kansas City's urban core, clearing away thousands of dwellings and converting low-income neighborhoods into industrial and commercial land-use. As this paper shows, in the 1950s and 1960s the city experienced a series of unprecedented socio-spatial changes, including a reorientation of downtown land-uses, large-Scale slum clearance, and a restructuring of city government activities. In 1951, the City Council revised the 1923 zoning ordinance and enacted a minimum housing code. Land annexations in 1947 and 1950 extended the city's geographical size from 59.64 to 81.62 square miles, the first sizable additions to the city's area since 1909. A huge 1947 bond program passed, the first since 1930, to expedite the construction of new parks and recreation areas, zoning, public buildings, and slum clearance. Redevelopment bonds approved by voters in 1952 and 1954, in addition to federal urban renew al money, helped pay for land clearance in slum areas. By the 1960s, the Missouri Department of Highways and Transportation (MDHT) was building Interstates 70, 29, and 35 and the South Midtown Freeway (the Bruce R. Watkins Drive) to reach beyond the city's hinterland to facilitate suburban access to the downtown. In the three-year period from 1947 to 1950, the city resurfaced more than 228 miles of streets and by 1957 had removed all street cars to make way for the dominance of automobile transportation and the creation of an automobile-dependent populace (Cookingham 1956, 1957).