Books in Review Urban Development

and Renewal THE URBAN VILLAGERS. By Herbert

J. Gans. The Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., The Macmillan Company, 60 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1962. 367 pp. $7.00.

For all who love the city and partic- ularly for those involved in extending its liveable qualities, Herbert Gans’ book should hold high priority for fall reading lists. Descriptive but analytical, incisive yet always provocative, this study of Boston’s Italian villagers in the West End provides the framework for much needed discussion among planners, elected officials and the citizenry. Critics have long bewailed the fact that slum clearance projects have created or contributed to new slums elsewhere in the urban metro- politan area. With solid documentation Gans challenges the decision-makers re- sponsible for the West End clearance as to whether the area warranted such drastic surgery. Joining the anthropologists who live among their “tribes,” Gans becomes a West End resident, to learn that through the superficial glances of out- siders-more specifically planners and reformers-the area has incorrectly been dubbed a slum.

Restricted by their middle-class con- ceptions and limited by inadequate study and research, the decision-makers have made a slight error. Imagine the helpless patient incorrectly prodded to enter the operation room for an unnecessary “clear- ance.” This was Boston’s West End. Too late to stop the plans for its demise, the author-observer describes the sequence of events.

What Gans finds is some people with some problems. But who doesn’t have problems? Additionally, and more im- portantly, these people are not in search of middle-class mobility. The planners didn’t take the time or patience to see that there existed a working-class sub-

culture which was distinctive and satis- fying.

And if this were not enough for the Italian villagers, after being forced from their “nonslum” community they are left to “go it alone,” to find their safe, sani- tary, decent homes at rents they could afford! The slogans of “grass roots democracy,” “citizen participation,” “democratic planning” are hardly given lip service. Relocation indeed becomes a lonely affair. Sympathy must go to Gans, when in the midst of his scholastic en- deavors, after pangs of intellectual con- science as to whether he should become personally involved, he decides to cast his bit for the estranged villagers by sending off a memo urging officiakiom to plan a relocation program. No re- sponse. His book should serve as a me- morial to those displaced by unnecessary clearance and to those whose needs have been coldly disregarded.

JEWEL BELLUSH Hunter College of the City of New York

Representation CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTING : T h e

Issue of Equal Representation. By Andrew Hacker. The Brookings Institu- tion, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C., June 1963. xi, 132 pp. Tables. $3.50.

Technically, the first real challenge to Coleggrove v. Green will take place next fall when the Supreme Court of the United States hears oral argument in Wesberry v. Sanders (formerly Wes- berry v. Vundiver) and Wright v. Rocke- feller. While the famous Baker v. Carr decision opened the door to judicial relief from state legislative malapportionment, our grossly disparate congressional dis- tricts, which were at issue in the Cole- grove case, are still relatively immune from attack. The mere act of noting probable jurisdiction on the part of our

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