Redlining
People are denied loans or other financial services based on their race, ethnicity, or where they live. Mortgage lenders draw red lines on maps to indicate neighborhoods where they wouldn’t lend money
- started in the 1930s, limited home-buying opportunities for Black Americans
- made illegal under the FHA of 1968, but its effects are still seen today
Fair Housing Act of 1968
Prohibits discrimination in housing based on certain protected classes like race.
- supposed to counter the discriminatory and racist policies but does not work
- first act to federally target discrimination, actual acknowledgement
- now specifically addressing cities
Urban Renewal
- initiated by federal government after FHA as a way to reinvest in communities that the gov’t had shifted away from
- famously catalyzed by Robert Moses, the process of seizing and demolishing large swaths of private and public property, usually the clearance of slums, for the purpose of modernizing and improving aging infrastructure.
- US gov’t underwrote this process through Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
- Robert Moses: wanted to redefine lower Manhattan, moves into gentrification, attempt to improve values of property and kick out old residents
- 1960s Albina (Portland) hit hard by urban renewal, displaced by highways, eminent domain demolished homes
Ronek Park (1950)
Postwar non-discriminatory housing
- in proximity to New York City, majority of black/brown community ends up in Ronek after being rejected from other suburbs which don’t allow people of color
Context:
- redlining was result of influx of service men back to city
- housing discrimination
- Serviceman’s Readjustment Act (1944)
Colorado River Compact (1922)
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming
- extracting of coal, damming of water, water run-off affects natural environment
- need to gain control over water, one commodity implicates another
- river compact facilitates growth in the Southwest
- represents the turning of resources into commodities; water to turn coal into electricity, in order to move water you need coal, etc
Eminent Domain
- provides a gov’t right to expropriate private property for public use
- taking physically or by starting condemnation proceedings (blighted buildings)
- impacts communities of color more than whites
Manifest Destiny
The idea that Americans have a God-given right to expand into the west and settle.
Navajo Power Generating Station
Was a coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Nation in Arizona, provided electrical power to customer in Arizona, Nevada, and California
readings:
- Crabgrass Frontier
Bronzeville
Neighborhood in Chicago typified by overwhelmingly black population
- now a historic landmark and real estate designation
- efforts to revitalize Bronzeville, U of C vs. racial heritage tourism
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) 1944
- provides benefits to WWII veterans like education, unemployment insurance, and housing
- famously not actually provided to black veterans
United Mine Worker’s Strike: Ludlow, CO 1914
Ludlow CO was a company town driven by coal production, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company
- employees captive to the corporation, often in debt to the company
- the strike caused the company to call the national guard, many people killed
- foreshadows importance of natural resources as commodities
Gentrification
- displacement of existing communities, often of color, due to increased value of properties
- often wealthy white people move in and hike up the prices
- result of urban renewal efforts
- changes community and social fabric
- ex: Portland Albina neighborhood
Jane Jacobs
- critiqued Robert Moses and his urban renewal/slum clearance
- cities change according to how people interact with them
- you have to take all the people out of the city to have it perfectly planned, instead you need an organic approach
- not against planning, but against the planning that seeks to tear down and build a new city not for the people
- “if you can understand a city, then that city is dead”
- eyes on the street, buildings oriented to the street
- instrumental to the way we think about urban planning now
Subprime Lending
- offered to people deemed a credit risk at less favorable terms than conventional loans
- characterized by adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and teaser rates: a variable rate mortgage that changes depending on the economy or a starting rate that approximates a “conventional rate” then rapidly climbs
Readings:
- “Black, Brown, and Green: The Persistent Effect of Race in Home Mortgage Lending”
examples:
- Albina in Portland
Heritage Tourism
“traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present” (Baldwin)
- seeks to tie economic development back to the community’s past
- currently, racial heritage tourism actually further marginalizes the urban poor, can be used as an excuse for harmful urban renewal, black elites isolated black poor
- “a seemingly noble concept… a marker of simply real estate value” (Baldwin)
Readings:
- Chess Moves on a Checkerboard
Robert Moses
Wanted to update “run-down” communities, specifically in NYC, through regulating growth and decentralization.
- urban renewal destroyed many communities of color
- “authority of man with carving knife clearing the cancerous tissue and replacing it with shiny modern planning”
- war on slums, wipe the slate clean
- get rid of streets, eliminate sidewalk culture, build projects to make it impossible for people to cluster
- responsible for the projects: concentrated poverty, feel trapped, places of fear, urban “removal” of African Americans, ended up being tremendous failure across cities
urban crisis
- widespread poverty, crime, racial segregation, decaying infrastructure, mass exodus of whites to the suburbs, city centers left with limited resources and opportunities
- fueled by deindustrialization and racism
Examples:
- Portland, Detroit, Pittsburgh
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Created by LBJ, supposed to address issues like redlining, enforce fair housing laws
