The Model Cities Program was an element of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty. The concept was presented by labor leader Walter Reuther to President Johnson in an off-the-record White House meeting on May 20, 1965. [1] In 1966, new legislation led to the more than 150 five-year-long, Model Cities experiments to develop new anti-poverty programs and alternative forms of municipal government. Model Cities represented a new approach that emphasized social program as well as physical renewal, and sought to coordinate the actions of numerous government agencies in a multifaceted attack on the complex roots of urban poverty. [2] The ambitious federal urban aid program succeeded in fostering a new generation of mostly black urban leaders. [3] The program ended in 1974. [4]
Authorized November 3, 1966, by the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, the program ended in 1974. Model Cities originated in response to several concerns of the mid-1960s. Widespread urban violence, disillusionment with existing urban renewal programs, and bureaucratic difficulties in the first years of the War on Poverty led to calls for reform of federal programs. The Model Cities initiative created a new program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) intended to improve coordination of existing urban programs. Several cities including Detroit, Oakland, Newark and Camden received funding. The program's initial goals emphasized comprehensive planning, emphasizing not just rebuilding, but also rehabilitation, social-service delivery, and citizen participation. In 1969, the Nixon administration officially changed course; however in the majority of cities, citizen-participation mechanisms continued to play an important role in local decision-making.
Other evaluations have identified both failures and success in the Model Cities program, with its limited effectiveness attributed to a combination of complicated bureaucracy, inadequate funding, and competing agendas at the local level. [5] [6] [ better source needed ]
Smithville, Tennessee, the smallest city to receive such funding, is an example of a city that benefited from the Model Cities Project. Congressman Joe L. Evins secured his hometown's inclusion in the project. Several buildings in downtown Smithville, such as the Dekalb County Court House and the Smithville City Hall, were built from funds from the Model Cities Project. They are still in use as of 2014, and make up a good portion of the city's downtown landscape.
Pikeville, Kentucky was the location of one of the biggest Model Cities projects. The Pikeville Cut-Through is 1,300 ft (400 m) wide, 3,700 ft (1,100 m) long, and 523 ft (159 m) deep. [7] The project was completed in 1987 following 14 years of work for a total cost of $77.6 million. The cut-through provides a path for a four-lane highway, a CSX railroad line, and the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River, which snaked through the downtown area, to eliminate almost yearly flooding. The river bed then was reclaimed by depositing fill from the cut-through into the old riverbed, significantly increasing the available space for development within the city. [7]
McAlester, Oklahoma, represented by Speaker of the House Carl Albert, was another Model Cities site. There, the program was instrumental in acquiring the land for a regional hospital, among other projects.
Detroit, Michigan was one of the largest Model Cities projects. Mayor Jerome P Cavanaugh was the only elected official to serve on President Johnson's task force. Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which used $490 million to try to turn a 9 sq mi (23 km2) section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a model city. [8]
In Atlanta there was a battle between competing visions. The city's political and business elite, and city planners, along with Atlanta's black middle class, wanted the federal funding to accelerate the economic growth of the entire city. They sought to protect the central business district property values from nearby slums and to construct new revenue-generating structures. However local community activists rallied poor residents in opposition to these plans, arguing that federal renewal funding should be used to replace deteriorating housing stock, whether with new public housing or with low-cost housing built by private developers. [9]
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and 1965. The term was first referenced during a 1964 speech by Johnson at Ohio University, then later formally presented at the University of Michigan, and came to represent his domestic agenda. The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
Jerome Patrick Cavanagh was an American politician who served as the mayor of Detroit, Michigan from 1962 to 1970. Initially a popular figure, his reputation was seriously damaged by the city's 1967 riots, the most destructive of any U.S. city that decade. He was the first mayor to reside at the Manoogian Mansion, donated to the city by the industrial baron Alex Manoogian.
The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), one of the longest-running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, funds local community development activities with the stated goal of providing affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development. CDBG, like other block grant programs, differ from categorical grants, made for specific purposes, in that they are subject to less federal oversight and are largely used at the discretion of the state and local governments and their subgrantees.
Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. The term has sometimes been used to apply to the entire neighborhood including Paradise Valley, but many consider the two neighborhoods to be separate. Together, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were bounded by Brush Street to the west, the Grand Trunk railroad tracks to the east, south to the Detroit River, and bisected by Gratiot Avenue. The area north of Gratiot Avenue to Grand Boulevard was defined as Paradise Valley.
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighted areas in inner cities in favour of new housing, businesses, and other developments.
Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, was settled in 1701 by French colonists. It is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America. Founded as a New France fur trading post, it began to expand during the 19th century with U.S. settlement around the Great Lakes. By 1920, based on the booming auto industry and immigration, it became a world-class industrial powerhouse and the fourth-largest city in the United States. It held that standing through the mid-20th century.
Redevelopment is any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses. It represents a process of land development uses to revitalize the physical, economic and social fabric of urban space.
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was a massive city-modernization scheme launched by the Government of India under the Ministry of Urban Development. It envisaged a total investment of over $20 billion over seven years. It is named after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. The aim is to encourage reforms and fast track planned development of identified cities. Focus is to be on efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms, community participation, and accountability of ULBs/ Parastatal agencies towards citizens.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation was a ministry of the Government of India responsible for urban poverty, housing, and employment programs. It involved in national policy decisions and coordinates with Indian central ministries, state governments, and central sponsor programs.
The Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) is an agency that provides affordable housing for low-income families in Atlanta. Today, the AHA is the largest housing agency in Georgia and one of the largest in the United States, serving approximately 50,000 people.
Participatory planning is an urban planning paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the community planning process. Participatory planning emerged in response to the centralized and rationalistic approaches that defined early urban planning work.
Planning and development in Detroit since the late 20th century has attempted to enhance the economy and quality of life of Detroit, Michigan, United States. In 1970, the private group Detroit Renaissance began to facilitate development in the city. Its successor, Business Leaders for Michigan, has continued to facilitate development into the 21st century. Projects have included new commercial facilities, revitalization of neighborhoods, hospitality infrastructure, and improvements to recreational and public facilities, such as the QLine light rail project.
The Housing Act of 1937, formally the "United States Housing Act of 1937" and sometimes called the Wagner–Steagall Act, provided for subsidies to be paid from the United States federal government to local public housing agencies (LHAs) to improve living conditions for low-income families.
The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Actof 1966 was enacted by the United States Congress to guarantee that federal grants were being spent on set projects in urban redevelopment. It was enacted as a broad urban planning program meant to revitalize cities and improve the welfare of people living in underdeveloped neighborhoods. The act provided aid to cities rebuilding blighted areas, while also offering measures that dealt with mass transit, beautification, conservation, water and air quality, public safety, and support for the arts and humanities.
In the United States, subsidized housing is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were one million public housing units. In 2022, about 5.2 million American households received some form of federal rental assistance.
The definition of mixed-income housing is broad and encompasses many types of dwellings and neighborhoods. Following Brophy and Smith, the following will discuss “non-organic” examples of mixed-income housing, meaning “a deliberate effort to construct and/or own a multifamily development that has the mixing of income groups as a fundamental part of its financial and operating plans” A new, constructed mixed-income housing development includes diverse types of housing units, such as apartments, town homes, and/or single-family homes for people with a range of income levels. Mixed-income housing may include housing that is priced based on the dominant housing market with only a few units priced for lower-income residents, or it may not include any market-rate units and be built exclusively for low- and moderate-income residents. Calculating Area Median Income (AMI) and pricing units at certain percentages of AMI most often determine the income mix of a mixed-income housing development. Mixed-income housing is one of two primary mechanisms to eliminate neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, combat residential segregation, and avoid the building of public housing that offers 100% of its housing units to those living in poverty. Mixed-income housing is built through federal-, state-, and local-level efforts and through a combination of public-private-non-profit partnerships.
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 90–448, 82 Stat. 476, enacted August 1, 1968, was passed during the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. The act came on the heels of major riots across cities throughout the U.S. in 1967, the assassination of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and the publication of the report of the Kerner Commission, which recommended major expansions in public funding and support of urban areas. President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to the legislation as one of the most significant laws ever passed in the U.S., due to its scale and ambition. The act's declared intention was constructing or rehabilitating 26 million housing units, 6 million of these for low- and moderate-income families, over the next 10 years.
Summit-University is a neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, that stretches roughly from University Avenue in the north, Lexington Parkway to the west, Summit Avenue to the south and to the east along John Ireland Boulevard, Kellogg Boulevard and Marion Street. Summit-University, Selby-Dale, St. Anthony Hill, Cathedral Hill, Woodland Park, Crocus Hill, Ramsey Hill, Hill District, Historic Hill District, Uni-Dale, North Quadrant, and Central Village all refer to parts of the neighborhood that is broadly known as Summit-University.
Slum clearance in the United States has been used as an urban renewal strategy to regenerate derelict or run-down districts, often to be replaced with alternative developments or new housing. Early calls were made during the 19th century, although mass slum clearance did not occur until after World War II with the introduction of the Housing Act of 1949 which offered federal subsidies towards redevelopments. The scheme ended in 1974 having driven over 2,000 projects with costs in excess of $50 billion.
Chester A. Rapkin was an American urban planner, urban planning theorist, and economist who made important contributions to housing and renewal programs in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. He published an important study in the 1950s about land use and vehicular traffic patterns and served on the New York City Planning Commission from 1969 to 1977. He coined the name "SoHo" for Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood and became known as the "Father of SoHo."