Books in Review Urban Renewal

THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER. A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949-1962. By Martin Anderson. MIT-Harvard Uni- versity Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, 1964. xiv, 272 pp. Charts and tables. $5.95.

As the circle of readers of this book widens, the response seems to be one bordering on mild hysteria. Housing re- formers, urban planners and public offi- cials who anticipated the rebirth of the city through the federal urban renewal program will be saddened by Anderson’s findings. While experts will probably find evidence disproving some of the author’s discoveries, the substance of the book serves as a constructive challenge.

Urban renewal, the author feels, is too long a process, averaging some twelve years. A sizable proportion of the newly gained land carved out of the city’s core has been put to uses not accessible to the residents or businessmen com- pelled to leave. While the largest single group displaced has been those with low income, only 6 per cent of renewal land has been utilized for public housing. The charges that renewal has contrib- uted to “Negro removal,” that it has shoved minority groups into more segre- gated housing, that it has forced rent increases for poor accommodations are documented.

Renewal continues to eat into the serious housing shortage experienced by low-income and middle-class populations. The claims that renewal would increase the city’s tax base and help fill its de- pleted coffers, have not been realized according to Anderson. Furthermore, the much-coveted federal dollar is not matched by private enterprise’s four dollars but more closely approximates an even matching of funds, the law not- withstanding. Each of the author’s con- tentions is buttressed by charts, diagrams and graphs, some of which have been fed

into the empiricist’s new love, the IBM machine.

My main quarrel with the author is with his conservative rhetoric. Believing that the whole renewal business has proved a failure, he urges that involve- ment of government must be totally eli- minated and that the city be left to the “invisible” and natural laws of the free market. His conclusions constitute a rhapsodic absurdity. The problem is not to repeal urban renewal but to redirect its ends to more balanced programs pro- viding for the many needs of the city and its peopledecent housing, good communities and a vital business core, with adequate cultural, educational and public services.

JEWEL BELLUSE Hunter College of the City University of New York

Council-Manager Plan COUNCIL-MANAGER ABANDONMENT REF-

ERENDUMS. A Study of 97 Referendums Held in 90 Cities and One County, 1958- 62. International City Managers’ Associ- ation, 1313 East 60th Street, Chicago 60637, 1964. 31 pp. Tables. $1.00.

This important study becomes hence- forth, by reason of its comprehensiveness, the definitive work on its topic.

Abandonments of the council-manager plan by vote of the people have not been a very important feature of the experience. There have been only 81 in 52 years and, in recent times, most of the attempts to vote out the manager plan have failed. This study, for example, exhibits that in the years between 1958 and 1963, 23 abandonments took place out of 108 at- tacks in 97 cities (some had two elections on the issue)-about five per year among 2,000 cities and contrasted with an annual increase of 75 in the list of communities having council-manager government. Sixty-three per cent of these 108 refer- endums were held within the first eight years following adoption.

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