5.0UrbanRenewal.pptxUrban Renewal and Community Development
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What is Urban Renewal?
Urban renewal (or urban redevelopment) is a program of land redevelopment in cities,
often where there is urban decay.
Modern attempts at renewal began in the late 19th century in developed nations,
and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s under the rubric of reconstruction.
The process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in
the history and demographics of cities around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal#See_also
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Official Beginnings
Urban Renewal began with the Housing Act of 1949 an was officially ended in 1973. The goals of the program are as follows:
Elimination substandard housing,
Revitalizing city economies,
Constructing good housing,
Reducing de facto segregation.
The method used was clearance and rebuilding directed by local agencies and supported by federal subsidies.
It still stands as the largest federal urban programing U.S. history, it reshaped parts of hundreds of communities.
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Intention and Reality
The intent of Urban Renewal was to eliminate slums by replacing bad, old housing with good, new housing was very clear.
It became apparent that local intentions and federal intentions were not always the same.
From a federal point of view housing was central however many locals wanted
the rundown housing to be replaced with commercial development to improve the tax base.
In time the program change from its initial shape into something that both the the local and feds could live with.
Overtime the negative aspects of the program began to exert pressure for change.
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The Negative and Positive Side of Urban Renewal
Negative side: the human side
On the positive side it gave many cities the ability to compete with suburbs.
At best Urban Renewal was creative destruction of capitalism.
It tore away an old and obsolescent urban fabric and replaced it with some thing newer and brighter, and, often more economically viable.
But such destruction is not without pain to individuals and enterprises.
In a sense it acts as a promoter of “gentrification” a trend that most cities seem to welcome.
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Gentrification
Gentrification is a process of renovating deteriorated urban neighborhoods by means of the influx of more affluent residents.
Gentrification can improve the material quality of a neighborhood, while forcing
the relocation of current, established residents and businesses, causing them to move from a gentrified area, seeking lower cost housing and stores.
Gentrification often shifts a neighborhood’s racial/ethnic composition and average household income by
developing new, more expensive housing, businesses and improved resources.
The gentrification process is typically the result of increasing attraction to an area by people with higher incomes spilling over from neighboring cities, towns, or neighborhoods.
Further steps are increased investments in a community and the related infrastructure by
real estate development businesses, local government, or community activists and resulting economic development, increased attraction of business, and lower crime rates.
In addition to these potential benefits, gentrification can lead to population migration and displacement.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
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What is Community Development?
Community development is define as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.“
It is a broad term given to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to
improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities.
Community development seeks to empower individuals and groups of people with the skills they need to effect change within their communities.
These skills are often created through the formation of social groups working for a common agenda.
Community developers must understand both how to work with individuals and how to affect communities' positions within the context of larger social institutions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_development#United_States
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Official Beginnings
One year after the termination of Urban Renewal, Congress passed the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.
This act replaced Urban Renewal and those programs that fund specific categories of activities i.e. sewage treatment, recreation, or housing.
This act provided Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) to permit localities to
pursue a wide of activities deemed necessary by the municipally involved.
The intent of the block grant was to reduce the federal role in local affairs by allowing the municipalities more discretion.
Virtually every municipality in the nation received some funds
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Follow the Money
The primary focus of CDs was on the poor.
However many communities spent most of the money on brick & mortar rather than services.
If a municipality spent most of the CD funds on services and if they were discontinued,
they could find themselves out on a financial limb.
Legislation required that the major amount o CD funds to be used that primarily
benefited low and moderate-income persons.
The act required each community to include as part of its grant application a Housing Assistance Plan (HAP),
which spelled out community housing needs and laid out plans for dealing with them.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_States
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Urban Homesteading
In general Community Development has differed from Urban Renewal primary in its gentler approach and in its emphasis on rehabilitation and preservation,
as apposed to Urban Renewal’s clear-and-start-from-scratch approach.
One program that’s been a success in some cities in urban homesteading. This can refer to several different things:
programs by local, state, and federal agencies in the USA who work to help get people into city homes, squatting, practicing urban agriculture, or practicing sustainable living techniques.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_homesteading
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Squatting
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally.
He forecasts there will be two billion by 2030 and three billion by 2050.
Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is
rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."
Squatting can be related to political movements, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist.
It can be a means to conserve buildings or simply to provide affordable housing.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting_in_the_United_States
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Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture, urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in or around urban areas.
Urban agriculture can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture.
These activities occur in peri-urban areas as well, and peri-urban agriculture may have different characteristics.
Urban agriculture can reflect varying levels of economic and social development.
It may be a social movement for sustainable communities, where organic growers, "foodies," and "locavores" form social networks founded on a shared ethos of nature and community holism.
These networks can evolve when receiving formal institutional support, becoming integrated into local town planning as a "transition town" movement for sustainable urban development.
For others, food security, nutrition, and income generation are key motivations for the practice.
In either case, more direct access to fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat products through urban agriculture can improve food security and food safety
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Sustainable living
Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources, and one's personal resources.
Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by altering their methods of transportation, energy consumption, and/or diet.
Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology.
The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development.
Lester R. Brown, a prominent environmentalist, describes sustainable living in the twenty-first century as "shifting to a renewable energy-based, reuse/recycle economy with a diversified transport system.“
However Derrick Jensen a prominent critic of mainstream environmentalism argues that "industrial civilization is not and can never be sustainable".
The natural conclusion is that sustainable living is at odds with industrialization.
Thus, practitioners of the philosophy potentially face the challenge of living in an industrial society and adapting alternative norms, technologies, or practices.
However, practical ecovillage builders like Living Villages maintain that the shift to alternative technologies will only be successful if
the resultant built environment is attractive to a local culture and can be maintained and adapted as necessary over multiple generations.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecovillage
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Slums
slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting mostly of
closely packed, decrepit housing units in a situation of deteriorated or incomplete infrastructure, inhabited primarily by impoverished persons.
While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, law enforcement and other basic services.
Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality construction or provision of basic maintenance, have deteriorated.
Due to increasing urbanization of the general populace, slums became common in the 18th to late 20th centuries in the United States and Europe.
Slums are still predominantly found in urban regions of developing countries, but are also still found in developed economies.
According to UN-Habitat, around 33% of the urban population in the developing world in 2012, or about 863 million people, lived in slums.
The world's largest slum city is found in the Neza-Chalco-Ixtapaluca area, located in the State of Mexico.
Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons.
https :// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel#See_also
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Slums are traditionally described as dense urban settlements, usually displaying characteristics such as crowded and compact housing units, informal delivery of utilities, and unofficial recognition by local government.
In the Philippines, residents of slum areas are commonly referred to as "squatters" and have historically been subject to relocation or forced demolition.
With a steadily growing metropolitan area, Metro Manila is subject to a densifying population of slum dwellers—a 2014 article states that Manila has an estimated 4 million people living in slums.
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The Housing Question
Housing, or more generally living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings collectively, for the purpose of
sheltering people —the planning or provision delivered by an authority, with related meanings.
The social issue is of ensuring that members of society have a home in which to live, whether
this is a house, or some other kind of dwelling, lodging, or shelter.
Many governments have one or more housing authorities,
sometimes also called a housing ministry, or housing department.
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The Importance of Housing
Housing is probably the most important issue in urban planning.
Housing constitutes the biggest single land use in most cities and towns.
In many cities housing and the land under it constitute more than half of the entire real property tax base.
Housing is often the single largest item in a family’s budget.
Equity in a house often constitutes the major share of the estate a person passes on to his or her descendants.
The nation’s housing market represents the sum of thousands of separate housing markets.
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Planning for Housing
For housing that is to be built by the private market, meaning without direct subsidy of any kind, the main step a community can take
is to provide the opportunity for the market to work.
At the physical level this means providing infrastructures, namely
roads, public water, and sewers.
Land cannot be developed for housing without road access, and it cannot be developed at more than very low density
without public water and sewers.
Beyond these absolutely essential items, other public investment will affect the rate of new housing construction.
Land-use controls will limit the quantity of housing stock by setting and upper limit on the number of units per acre.
Controls also affect price by the types of units they permit.
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Question
What can the community do to provide low-and moderate-income housing?
It can provide the infrastructure to support and the land-use controls to permit the building of less expensive housing types.
It can encourage builders to seek out and use federal and state subsidies for low-and moderate-income housing.
It can make it community policy not to use its land-use control and other legal powers to obstruct the building of subsidized house.
It can take an accommodating rater than a resisting stance towards group homes.
In many communities citizens’ resistance to groups homes can be ferocious!
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A Way to Supply Affordable Housing
A teardown is a process in which a real estate company or individual buys an existing home or other building and then demolishes and replaces it with a new one.
Frequently, the new building is larger than the previous one.
Reasons for developers to tear down can include increasing the appeal of the property to prospective buyers
or taking advantage of rising property values.
The process is especially common in older suburbs, where people wish to have larger homes,
and yet do not want to move to distant exurbs or new developments.
Replacement often brings modernization, new structures being built
to modern building codes, energy efficiency standards, and aesthetics.
They may be in different architectural style, thus not fitting the historic character of the neighborhood.
However, not all older homes have historical or architectural value.
Finally, an existing house may have no value relative to the land it sits on
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_town#Exurbs
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What is a McMansion or Monster Home?
In suburban communities, McMansion is a pejorative term for a large "mass-produced" dwelling, constructed with low-quality materials and craftsmanship, using a mishmash of architectural symbols to invoke connotations of wealth or taste,
executed via poorly thought-out exterior and interior design.[
The McMansion larger home is typically constructed on the outskirts of the city,
often further out from the city center than suburban tract homes.
McMansions are often found on land that is zoned as (or recently re-zoned from) agricultural instead of residential, and often outside of the city proper limits,
as both of these result in lower property taxes.
These areas may be in demand by buyers who desire a bigger house than the tract home but do not have the means to afford homes
in the city's traditional upscale neighborhoods.
Due to this demographic which is more susceptible to boom and bust economic cycles, prices
are volatile and often fueled by speculation.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMansion
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What is Tract Housing?
Tract housing, also known colloquially in the United States and Canada as cookie-cutter housing, is a type of housing development
in which multiple similar homes are built on a tract of land that is subdivided into individual small lots.
Tract housing developments are found in world suburb developments that were modeled on the "Levittown" concept
and sometimes encompass large areas of dozens of square miles.
As the first and one of the largest mass-produced suburbs, Levittown quickly became a symbol of postwar suburbia.
Although Levittown provided affordable houses in what many residents felt to be a congenial community, critics decried
its homogeneity, blandness, and racial exclusivity (the initial lease prohibited rental to non-whites).
Today, "Levittown" is used as a term to describe overly sanitized suburbs consisting largely of identical housing.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tract_housing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_ New_York#Place_in_American_culture
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Planning for an Older Population
What are the steps needed to plan for older people.
A Need to understand demography of the US
Money, votes, purchasing power belong in the hands of older folks
A limited number of older people now live in NORCs, an acronym for Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. This is largely an urban phenomenon.
People simply stay on after their children have grown up.
It appears that a majority of older folks (89%) have express a desire to remain in their communities
for the rest of their lives.
It’s important to make neighborhood, town centers, downtowns, and other areas better places for older people to live,
making these places more genuinely mult-generational.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturally_occurring_retirement_community
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States
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Atlanta Regional Commission
ARC defines the goals of planning for an older population that wants to remain in place as follows:
Promoted housing and transportation options
Encourage healthy lifestyles
Expand access to services
They advocate seven principles:
Connectivity
Pedestrian access and transit
Provision of neighbor retail and services
Social interaction
Diversity of dwelling types
Healthy living
Consideration of existing residents
Designing a community that is well adapted to the needs of a senior population may require more flexibility in land-use controls
than many ordinances now provide.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Regional_Commission
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What can Government Do?
Dealing with problems of urban renewal is very difficult for local government both because of the large sums of money involved and because
the roots of the problem lie outside the purview of local government. [i.e. credit market conditions, housing prices, and labor market conditions]
Municipal governments can do some things to deal with the massive foreclosure and abandonment problems brought about by
the bubble in the housing prices that began to collapse in 2006 and an account of the reckless mortgage lending that help cause the bubble itself.
However few, if any, municipalities have the funds necessary to save large numbers of homeowners from foreclosure
even if they have the political will to do so.
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