David R. Goldfield

Private Neighborhood Redevelopment and Displacement: The Case of Washington, D.C

As a result of various economic and demographic factors, Washington, D.C. is leading a national trend toward the private revitalization of inner city areas. It is not yet clear whether this trend represents a back-to-the-city movement or merely the shifting of population from one section of the city to another. Research to date is inconclusive both as to the extent of displacement and to the deposition of the displaced households. The local government had adopted, but not seriously enforced, several measures that would limit real estate speculation and protect the rights of the typically poor inhabitants.

The Limits of Suburban Growth: The Washington, D.C. SMSA

The growth of suburbs and the corresponding depopulation and decay of cities have become axioms of contemporary American society. We are a suburban nation. Population, wealth, and popular culture reside in the suburb as if some hidden centrifugal force has cast them from the central city. Suburban expansion, however, may have attained its apogee during the 1960s. Forces are gathering momentum to ensure that the next decade will not only witness a diminution of growth on the urban fringes, but perhaps even a reversal of the pattern of growth that has dominated the nation at least since World War II.

National Urban Policy in Sweden

Abstract National urban policy in Sweden is framed within a three-tiered administrative system of city, county (region), and state. As a result of national legislation, local authorities possess a planning monopoly. The state, however, influences local decision making through its financial and environmental policies. Regional government bears some responsibility for protecting national interests from local whim, but is playing a decreasing role in the urban policy sphere as local planning prerogatives are in ascendancy. Sweden has, generally, been successful in solving its urban housing shortage with a minimum of social dislocation. In addition, the social conscience of Swedish urban policy is matched by sensitivity for the environment. Increasingly over the past two years, however, financial exigencies have compromised social and environmental objectives and now a government in crisis confronts a national urban policy at the crossroads.

The urban South : a bibliography

Preface Dissertations and Theses Periodical Literature Monographs Geographic Index Subject Index List of Journals Surveyed

Historic Planning and Redevelopment in Minneapolis

Abstract The redevelopment process in Minneapolis involves an attempt to recreate the positive aspects of life that existed in the nineteenth-century city, an era when the city was a dynamic and positive environment. Redevelopment has focused on recovering die importance of downtown, restoring die industrial base lost to die suburbs and revitalizing neighborhood life—all characteristic aspects of the historic city. The citys public planning efforts, well documented by Altshuler and others, have involved significant cooperation among city agencies and private organizations. This paper will focus on die role of the private sector in this partnership to encourage redevelopment. Nicollet Mall and the industrial development program are two of the major accomplishments of the recovery efforts. Where success has eluded the city, as in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood re-vitalization project, more attention to the historic and social needs of residents might contribute to fulfillment of project goals. The Minnea...

The Automobile and the City in the American South

In the American South the automobile was never a luxury: it was a way of life. It was an inextricable part of the family patrimony and frequently, through various permutations, did indeed pass down through generations. The auto’s greatest impact on the South probably occurred in the region’s rural reaches where the new technology broke the chronic isolation and loneliness of life, made urban life and its attractions and distractions more readily available to country residents, and provided a means to get to that mill job while still retaining the family farm. The auto encouraged or, rather demanded, decent roads. In fact, the Good Roads Movement that energised Southern states during the 1920s attained its most loyal constituency in the rural districts. Good roads, in turn, encouraged the establishment of better services and industry. By bringing farms closer to market towns and cities, improved roads and the motor vehicles upon them transformed Southern agriculture in certain areas from the historically soil-leeching staple crop cultivation to dairying and truck farming.

A Reply To Professors Zikmund and Hadden

There is a strange sense of d6ja-vu in the recent literature on suburbia. &dquo;Suburb&dquo; is beginning to replace &dquo;city&dquo; in discussions of metropolitan problems. The urban crisis of the 1960s and its familiar rhetoric have found a suburban address. Stories on the &dquo;suburban crisis&dquo; crowd columns in the local press. Deteriorating social services, declining and even disappearing schools, and stagnant tax bases are common problems in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area (Washington Post, 1976a, 1976b, 1975a, 1975c, 1975g). &dquo;One inexorable fact,&dquo; warned Montgomery County Executive James P. Gleason, &dquo;is that we are running out of money in this county to do a lot of things&dquo; (Washington Post, 1975f). If the limits of growth are beginning to squeeze well-heeled suburbs like Montgomery County, it is probable that less affluent suburban jurisdictions are grappling with significant and potentially debilitating problems. As if financial difficulties were not sufficiently troublesome, political conflicts between &dquo;old-timers&dquo; and &dquo;newcomers&dquo; (Birch, 1975: 332), and legal pressure to share regional population and even poverty threaten suburban communities (Scott, 1975: 44). With the exodus of population and employment from the city now winding down, and with the structural variables pointing to problems rather than relief, the suburb

Neighborhood Preservation and Community Values in Historical Perspective

The scene could be suburbia anywhere: the neat, ranch-style homes surrounded by white picket fences, doors bedecked in wreaths heralding the Christmas season, the toys of summer—a boat, a bicycle, a grill—huddled in corners of back yards. If the scene is familiar, however, the location is not. This is the South Bronx, one of the most notorious physical and human wastelands in the nation, an obligatory station for politicians taking a pilgrimage to discover and expose poverty and urban decay. To casual observers, the scene in this ninety-home development known as Charlotte Gardens is bizarre; to residents it is the fulfillment of their American dream of a single-family home even if Times Square is only a short, twenty-minute subway ride away. The three-bedroom homes that sell for a modest

Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History

52,000 have a long waiting list of hopeful buyers. Fortunate residents enthused about their new environment. “I always dreamed of having my own private house,” Deloris Deleston confessed. Her neighbor, Julio Cruz remarked that “It’s not like living in an apartment where you don’t know your next-door neighbor.” And twelve-year old Melody Sellers noted that “In the summertime, it’s like the country.” (“Community of Delight,” 1984, p. 3)