Reassessing the History of Urban Renewal in the United States, 1950–1975

FAIN: RZ-260766-18

University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506-0004)
Douglas R. Appler (Project Director: December 2017 to February 2022)
Brent Cebul (Co Project Director: December 2017 to February 2022)

A conference and publications on the impact of urban renewal in the United States, 1950-1975.

During the mid-20th century, civic and political elites in more than 1,200 communities across the United States used federal urban renewal program funds to initiate locally planned slum clearance and redevelopment efforts. These projects had profound consequences for the communities involved, as they frequently targeted their oldest neighborhoods and most vulnerable populations. Efforts to write the history of urban renewal have been hampered by difficulties accessing data that correspond to its broad national impact. Many new data sources are making it possible for urban historians, planners, and architectural historians, among others, to more closely align urban renewal scholarship with the diverse geographies affected by the program. This conference will explore the consequences of urban renewal, prioritizing under-explored geographic scales, including small cities, suburbs, states, and regions, rather than the perspective of the single project in the major central city.

Associated Products

Reassessing the History of the Federal Urban Renewal Program: 1949-1974 (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Reassessing the History of the Federal Urban Renewal Program: 1949-1974
Author: Douglas R. Appler
Author: Brent Cebul
Author: Robert Nelson
Author: David Hochfelder
Author: Stacy Sewell
Author: Benjamin Lisle
Author: Leif Fredrickson
Author: Robert Fairbanks
Author: Colin Gordon
Author: Emily Bergeron
Author: Julie Riesenweber
Author: Francesca Ammon
Abstract: The Housing Act of 1949 was arguably the most consequential urban program of the postwar decades. Yet the popular and scholarly understanding of urban renewal does not reflect the breadth of its impact on the American landscape. Despite its broad popularity among communities of all sizes throughout the country, the overwhelming majority of scholarship that historicizes urban renewal is written from the perspective of single projects in large central cities. Building on recent trends in urban renewal scholarship, and on the launch of Renewing Inequality, the urban renewal map prepared by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond,Reassessing the History of Urban Renewal in the United States:1949-1974 will address this issue by approaching urban renewal from a more appropriately diverse range of geographic and social perspectives.
Date Range: October 2018-September 2019
Location: University of Kentucky
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLQelRcjpaY
Primary URL Description: This is a link to the YouTube video of the authors' presentations.

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