AHC: Slow down/stop the construction of New York City public housing

I'm rather curious as to what propelled the construction of the public housing projects in the New York City metropolitan area in the first place and if it is possible to slow down or if possible stop all construction of the public housing projects and what would be the implications of it.
 
I'm rather curious as to what propelled the construction of the public housing projects in the New York City metropolitan area in the first place and if it is possible to slow down or if possible stop all construction of the public housing projects and what would be the implications of it.

An interesting and complex topic probably being ignored due to its lack of Nazi's. My response is probably going to be more generalized than new york city specific, but I hope I can summarize some of that factors that went into post war urban renewal and public housing.


Its important to realize that a lot of America’s urban housing stock was in a state of poor condition in the post war era. This was especially true in neighbors frequented by the poor, immigrants, and most importantly minorities. Covenants of various sorts were common nationwide, and they were largely designed to restrict the housing opportunities of blacks and Hispanics to specific neighborhoods. These neighborhoods tended to have the oldest poorest quality housing (seldom maintained and lacking basic ammenities), which nevertheless commanded high rents due to the lack of better options. However despite widespread poverty, said communities were surprisingly vibrant possessing a small middle class which operated the community’s businesses and extensive social capital.


This situation was already being perpetuated by a federal government which favored new white suburban construction over continued use and maintenance in preexisting urban environments. The Federal Housing Authority created insurance risk, maps which codified this. White suburbia = good, immigrant city = bad, black inhabitation anywhere = worst. This helped to deny loans to the inner city (which continued to deteriorate) while providing a major incentive to the coming suburban boom.



Its also important to consider the influence of the leading urban theorists of the era. The british theorists of the previous generation tended to hate the city. They saw mankind’s ideal and natural source of habitation as being the country towns and villages. Industrial cities were therefore unnatural, as they broke man’s connection to nature, were dirty and disease riven, and brought about vice and social discord. Garden cities would preserve nature, prevent too much population density, and offer the greatest aggregate benefit to the population. This thinking became quite popular in America.



Modernist planners refined of many of these ideas. They saw the automobile as a great boon, allowing people to seamless enjoy the benefits of both the country and the city. They also saw planning in a more industrial sense, seeking to maximize paper efficiency and to rationalize zoning. In this view, cities should be places of work and industry, connected by large highways which would allow for a mostly commuter workforce while the city’s resident population could efficiently be housed in modern high-rises surrounded by verdant parks.



The postwar wave of urban renewal and Public housing construction was a product of these two schools of thought. Urban renewal freed up land for new highways, major commercial or recreational projects, as well as new parks and greenspaces. The housing stock being demolished was substandard, and it was being replaced with new more efficient housing units (suburbia for the middle classes and tenements for the poor) which were resplendent with modern amenities. The problem is said theories seldom considered what the people their relocating actually wanted. The urban renewal dissipated a tremendous amount of social capital, destroyed and dispersed thousands of small businesses, and broke up the natural flow of the city. The new highways effectively served as walls bifurcating pre-existing neighborhoods and social units. Unsurprisingly said urban renewal tended to target minority and immigrant neighborhoods, and the resulting housing projects aimed to create new communities with massive densities which tended to be isolated from the rest of the city by barriers of highways and green space. Unfortunately, we all know what the consequences of this was.

If you want to stop urban renewal, you will need to do several things. You will need to create a philosophical movement which challenges and discredits the modernist planners, you will need to conduct major upgrades to urban housing stock prior to WWII, you will also likely need to change how interstate highways link with major metros particularly their urban cores.
 
One thing you could change would be Berman vs. Parker (1954), this SC ruling significantly boosted governments ability to use eminent domain to acquire un-blighted properties for redevelopment on the basis that redevelopment programs should be judged on as an entire project rather than just the individual property in dispute. Without that ability various Housing commissions will find it much harder to get the big blocks of land necessary for building the such housing estates.
The problem is that that Supreme Court ruling was 8-0 with Justice Douglas writing in his opinion, "If owner after owner were permitted to resist these redevelopment programs on the ground that his particular property was not being used against the public interest, integrated plans for redevelopment would suffer greatly". Changing that would be very hard.
 
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