WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are pulling 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:05.219 apart a phrase that sits right at the intersection 00:00:05.219 --> 00:00:10.300 of bureaucracy and bulldozers. It is a term you 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:12.380 have likely heard thrown around in city council 00:00:12.380 --> 00:00:16.019 meetings, seen on campaign flyers, or maybe read 00:00:16.019 --> 00:00:19.320 on a placard at a construction site. Urban renewal. 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:22.039 It's a fascinating term, isn't it? Linguistically, 00:00:22.100 --> 00:00:25.059 renewal. Right. It sounds so incredibly benign. 00:00:25.059 --> 00:00:28.440 It evokes spring cleaning or a spa day or maybe, 00:00:28.519 --> 00:00:30.920 you know, fixing a leaky roof. It sounds like 00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:33.399 something absolutely no one could possibly object 00:00:33.399 --> 00:00:36.229 to. Exactly. I mean. Who is pro -decay? Nobody. 00:00:36.429 --> 00:00:38.750 But when you actually dig into the sources we 00:00:38.750 --> 00:00:40.710 have today, and we have a massive stack here, 00:00:40.789 --> 00:00:43.570 we're talking global policy documents, Supreme 00:00:43.570 --> 00:00:45.549 Court transcripts, historical records from the 00:00:45.549 --> 00:00:48.130 19th century. The story isn't quite so rosy. 00:00:48.149 --> 00:00:50.829 Urban renewal is a concept that hides a history 00:00:50.829 --> 00:00:53.909 of, well, dynamite, mass displacement, and some 00:00:53.909 --> 00:00:56.390 of the most intense ideological battles over 00:00:56.390 --> 00:00:58.759 how human beings should live together. It is 00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:00.880 a euphemism that does a lot of heavy lifting. 00:01:01.100 --> 00:01:03.039 I mean, on the surface, the premise is simple. 00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:05.700 Take a neighborhood that is struggling physically, 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:09.340 economically, socially, and make it better. Right. 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:11.840 But the core question, the one that runs through 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:14.060 every single document we are looking at today 00:01:14.060 --> 00:01:17.400 is better for whom? That is the million dollar 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:19.540 question, isn't it? Is it better for the people 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:21.599 living there or better for the people who want 00:01:21.599 --> 00:01:24.299 to be living there? Our mission today is to unpack 00:01:24.299 --> 00:01:28.810 that tension, the tension between progress. the 00:01:28.810 --> 00:01:31.290 shiny new skyscrapers, the convention centers, 00:01:31.530 --> 00:01:34.890 the six -lane highways, and place. And place 00:01:34.890 --> 00:01:37.870 means the actual community, the history. The 00:01:37.870 --> 00:01:40.670 messy, complex networks of people who call those 00:01:40.670 --> 00:01:43.709 so -called blighted areas home. And we are going 00:01:43.709 --> 00:01:46.269 to see that word blight come up over and over 00:01:46.269 --> 00:01:48.569 and over again. It is the engine that drives 00:01:48.569 --> 00:01:51.189 this whole machine. Before we get into the history, 00:01:51.269 --> 00:01:53.459 let's actually stick a pin in that word. Because 00:01:53.459 --> 00:01:56.019 words matter in policy and blight is a heavy 00:01:56.019 --> 00:01:58.459 one. They really do. I mean, blight is originally 00:01:58.459 --> 00:02:01.359 a biological or an agricultural term. Like on 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:04.359 a plant. Exactly. It refers to a plant disease, 00:02:04.620 --> 00:02:07.719 a fungus, something that infects a crop and kills 00:02:07.719 --> 00:02:11.000 it from the inside out. Or it refers to, you 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.800 know, gangrenous tissue on a body. So when urban 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:16.460 planners and politicians started applying that 00:02:16.460 --> 00:02:19.340 specific word to neighborhoods in the early 20th 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:21.979 century, they were doing something very psychological. 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:24.319 They were pathologizing the city. Precisely. 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:27.219 They were framing it as a disease. Right. Because 00:02:27.219 --> 00:02:29.879 if a neighborhood is just poor, maybe you send 00:02:29.879 --> 00:02:34.060 aid. You cut it out. You excise it. You don't 00:02:34.060 --> 00:02:37.199 negotiate with a tumor. Wow. So by labeling a 00:02:37.199 --> 00:02:40.020 neighborhood as blighted, you are implicitly 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:43.360 justifying a radical and often destructive intervention. 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:46.439 You are saying that the area is not just struggling, 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:48.439 but that it is a threat to the health of the 00:02:48.439 --> 00:02:50.759 entire city. Okay, so let's define the scope 00:02:50.759 --> 00:02:52.860 here. When we say urban renewal or sometimes 00:02:52.860 --> 00:02:55.120 you hear urban regeneration or redevelopment, 00:02:55.199 --> 00:02:57.900 what is the actual technical definition? Are 00:02:57.900 --> 00:02:59.819 we talking about fixing potholes or are we talking 00:02:59.819 --> 00:03:02.719 about leveling entire city blocks? Well, technically 00:03:02.719 --> 00:03:05.479 it covers the whole spectrum. At its core, urban 00:03:05.479 --> 00:03:09.159 renewal is any initiative, usually state -led 00:03:09.159 --> 00:03:11.439 or state -enabled, that's meant to address urban 00:03:11.439 --> 00:03:14.539 decay. On the really mild end of the spectrum, 00:03:14.620 --> 00:03:17.360 you have micro -renovation. Micro -renovation. 00:03:17.460 --> 00:03:19.379 So that's upgrading infrastructure. Sure. Better 00:03:19.379 --> 00:03:23.319 sewers, new streetlights, fixing facades on buildings. 00:03:23.379 --> 00:03:25.120 You keep the buildings, you keep the people, 00:03:25.159 --> 00:03:27.120 you just make the environment work a little better. 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:29.159 But that's not usually what makes the history 00:03:29.159 --> 00:03:32.599 books. No, not at all. On the other far end of 00:03:32.599 --> 00:03:34.379 the spectrum, you have slum clearance. Right. 00:03:34.500 --> 00:03:37.180 And this is the tabula rasa approach, the blank 00:03:37.180 --> 00:03:40.719 slate. You designate an area as completely unsalvageable. 00:03:40.740 --> 00:03:43.159 You evict the population. You demolish every 00:03:43.159 --> 00:03:45.740 structure and you build something entirely new 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:47.780 on top of the ruins. And that is where the conflict. 00:03:48.009 --> 00:03:50.770 really explodes, isn't it? It's that clash between 00:03:50.770 --> 00:03:53.770 economic revitalization, bringing tax base and 00:03:53.770 --> 00:03:57.169 capital back into a city and the just the raw 00:03:57.169 --> 00:04:00.250 reality of displacement. It is about power. At 00:04:00.250 --> 00:04:02.229 the end of the day, it's about who has the power 00:04:02.229 --> 00:04:05.270 to look at a map, draw a line and say this stays 00:04:05.270 --> 00:04:08.469 and this goes. And historically, the people living 00:04:08.469 --> 00:04:10.689 in the this goes zones have not been the ones 00:04:10.689 --> 00:04:13.180 holding the pen. Now, I think most people, when 00:04:13.180 --> 00:04:14.960 they hear this, they associate the concept with 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:17.420 the 1950s, you know, the era of Robert Moses, 00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:20.579 big highways, concrete housing blocks. But our 00:04:20.579 --> 00:04:23.500 sources suggest the DNA of urban renewal goes 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:26.519 back. Much, much further. Oh, way further. We 00:04:26.519 --> 00:04:28.540 have to start in the 19th century, right in the 00:04:28.540 --> 00:04:31.360 smog of the Industrial Revolution. If you look 00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:34.439 at cities like London, Manchester, or even early 00:04:34.439 --> 00:04:36.959 industrial New York, they were undergoing this 00:04:36.959 --> 00:04:40.540 terrifying transformation. Industrialization 00:04:40.540 --> 00:04:42.759 was just sucking people in from the countryside 00:04:42.759 --> 00:04:45.399 by the millions. That classic Dickensian nightmare 00:04:45.399 --> 00:04:48.519 scenario. It really was. You had extreme overcrowding, 00:04:48.579 --> 00:04:51.920 basically zero sanitation, frequent cholera outbreaks, 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:55.699 soot and smoke everywhere. And the reaction to 00:04:55.699 --> 00:04:58.379 this among the ruling classes was it was a mix 00:04:58.379 --> 00:05:01.699 of genuine concern for public health and a very 00:05:01.699 --> 00:05:04.060 heavy dose of moral panic. Moral panic. What 00:05:04.060 --> 00:05:06.319 do you mean by that? There was this progressive 00:05:06.319 --> 00:05:09.920 doctrine that emerged in Victorian England. And 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.660 the belief was that the physical squalor of the 00:05:12.660 --> 00:05:16.779 slums was directly causing moral squalor. If 00:05:16.779 --> 00:05:19.339 people lived in filth, they would become filthy 00:05:19.339 --> 00:05:22.860 citizens. Therefore, if you improve the housing, 00:05:23.060 --> 00:05:26.079 you could actually morally reform the poor. So 00:05:26.079 --> 00:05:28.519 it wasn't just let's stop the rats from spreading 00:05:28.519 --> 00:05:31.759 disease. It was let's make them into proper upstanding 00:05:31.759 --> 00:05:34.100 British subjects by giving them better bricks 00:05:34.100 --> 00:05:36.620 and plumbing. Exactly. It was social engineering 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:39.199 through architecture. And you see this with figures 00:05:39.199 --> 00:05:42.079 like George Peabody and the Peabody Trust. In 00:05:42.079 --> 00:05:44.639 the mid -19th century, they targeted this notorious 00:05:44.639 --> 00:05:47.220 slum in Westminster called the Devil's Acre. 00:05:47.339 --> 00:05:49.459 The Devil's Acre. That's a subtle name. I assume 00:05:49.459 --> 00:05:51.160 the realtors didn't come up with that one. I 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:53.040 think it's safe to say they did not. It was a 00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:55.279 rough place. The Trust bought it, cleared it, 00:05:55.379 --> 00:05:57.360 and built what they called a model dwellings. 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:00.860 These were sturdy brick estates. They had shared 00:06:00.860 --> 00:06:03.660 laundry facilities, courtyards. And compared 00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:05.699 to the slum, plum they replaced, they were miracles 00:06:05.699 --> 00:06:08.639 of hygiene and order. But the underlying philosophy 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:11.420 was deeply paternalistic. It was the wealthy 00:06:11.420 --> 00:06:14.000 deciding how the poor should live. Yes, it was 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.720 about imposing order from the outside. Speaking 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:19.060 of imposing order, we have to talk about Paris. 00:06:19.279 --> 00:06:21.199 Because when I think of Paris, I think of romance 00:06:21.199 --> 00:06:24.420 and croissants and these wide, beautiful boulevards. 00:06:24.879 --> 00:06:27.759 I don't think of urban renewal. But the Paris 00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:30.300 we see today is actually the result of one of 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:32.459 the most aggressive renewal projects in history. 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:34.720 Oh, absolutely. What we call Hausmann's Paris. 00:06:34.899 --> 00:06:39.000 In 1853, Napoleon III ordered Baron Hausmann 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.720 to modernize the city. At the time, Paris was 00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:46.240 still essentially medieval, a maze of narrow 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:48.779 winding streets, incredibly dense, very dark. 00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:51.370 And Haussmann didn't just tweak it. He sliced 00:06:51.370 --> 00:06:54.370 through it. He carved those massive boulevards 00:06:54.370 --> 00:06:56.250 right through the existing neighborhoods. He 00:06:56.250 --> 00:06:58.050 didn't go around them. He went through them. 00:06:58.189 --> 00:07:00.069 What was the scale of that? He demolished roughly 00:07:00.069 --> 00:07:03.750 19 ,000 buildings. Wow. Displaced thousands and 00:07:03.750 --> 00:07:06.110 thousands of people. And while the stated goals 00:07:06.110 --> 00:07:08.850 were, you know, better airflow, sanitation, and 00:07:08.850 --> 00:07:11.569 traffic circulation, there's a very clear military 00:07:11.569 --> 00:07:14.329 objective too. The barricades. The barricades. 00:07:14.470 --> 00:07:17.889 Exactly. France had a long, long history of revolutions. 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:23.459 1830, 1848. And it is very easy to block a narrow, 00:07:23.459 --> 00:07:26.959 winding medieval street with furniture and cobblestones 00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:29.540 to fight off the army. Right. It is very, very 00:07:29.540 --> 00:07:31.939 hard to block a boulevard that is 80 feet wide. 00:07:32.319 --> 00:07:34.279 Houseman's avenues were designed to be difficult 00:07:34.279 --> 00:07:36.899 to barricade and very easy to fire cannons down. 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:40.240 So urban renewal as a counterinsurgency strategy, 00:07:40.459 --> 00:07:42.800 that is a wild connection I had never made. It's 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:45.279 all about state control over the urban environment. 00:07:45.300 --> 00:07:47.920 And this idea of sanitizing the city. for both 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:50.800 health and political reasons. It hopped the Atlantic 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:53.480 to the U .S. in the 1890s with what was called 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:55.779 the City Beautiful Movement. This was the era 00:07:55.779 --> 00:07:57.920 of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 00:07:58.180 --> 00:08:00.660 right? The famous white city. Yes, that was the 00:08:00.660 --> 00:08:02.879 model. The American upper middle class looked 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:04.560 at their industrial cities, which were becoming 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:06.800 crowded and smoky and full of immigrants, and 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:09.100 they decided they needed a facelift. They wanted 00:08:09.100 --> 00:08:12.120 neoclassical architecture, grand monuments, sweeping 00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:14.519 civic centers. They wanted American cities to 00:08:14.519 --> 00:08:17.339 look like Rome or Paris. Exactly. But again, 00:08:17.459 --> 00:08:20.879 to build a grand civic center or a massive parkway, 00:08:20.959 --> 00:08:22.980 you have to put it somewhere. And that somewhere 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:25.439 was usually where the poorest people live. Almost 00:08:25.439 --> 00:08:28.639 always. The City Beautiful movement really established 00:08:28.639 --> 00:08:32.240 the precedent in the U .S. that aesthetics and 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:34.639 this vague notion of civic virtue could trump 00:08:34.639 --> 00:08:37.059 the property rights of the poor. OK, so that's 00:08:37.059 --> 00:08:40.000 the prologue. A century of establishing the idea. 00:08:40.519 --> 00:08:44.269 But the main event. The era of the sledgehammer 00:08:44.269 --> 00:08:46.970 really kicks off in the 20th century. And the 00:08:46.970 --> 00:08:49.350 catalyst, as it seems to be for everything in 00:08:49.350 --> 00:08:52.210 modern history, was World War II. The war broke 00:08:52.210 --> 00:08:54.110 the world and it had to be put back together. 00:08:54.529 --> 00:08:57.250 In Europe, reconstruction was brutally literal. 00:08:58.049 --> 00:09:00.710 Cities like London, Berlin, Rotterdam, Warsaw, 00:09:00.970 --> 00:09:02.870 they were just piles of rubble. They didn't have 00:09:02.870 --> 00:09:04.809 a choice. They had to rebuild from scratch. And 00:09:04.809 --> 00:09:07.389 this gave the urban planners a blank slate that 00:09:07.389 --> 00:09:09.230 they'd only dreamed of before. It really did. 00:09:09.309 --> 00:09:12.230 It was the golden age of functionalism. Architects 00:09:12.230 --> 00:09:14.610 like Luc Robussier had been arguing for decades 00:09:14.610 --> 00:09:17.230 that the old city was obsolete, that it was unhealthy 00:09:17.230 --> 00:09:18.970 and inefficient. You wanted the tower in the 00:09:18.970 --> 00:09:21.669 park, right? The tower in the park. High -rise 00:09:21.669 --> 00:09:23.990 residential blocks completely separated from 00:09:23.990 --> 00:09:26.490 industrial zones, all connected by high -speed 00:09:26.490 --> 00:09:29.889 roads. No more messy, mixed -use streets where 00:09:29.889 --> 00:09:32.389 people lived above the shop. Order and separation 00:09:32.389 --> 00:09:35.409 were key. So in the UK, you get the Town and 00:09:35.409 --> 00:09:38.169 Country Planning Act of 1947, which leads to 00:09:38.169 --> 00:09:39.970 the building of the new towns and the big council 00:09:39.970 --> 00:09:43.049 estates. In France, you get the Grands Ensembles 00:09:43.049 --> 00:09:45.370 on the outskirts of Paris. Correct. But here 00:09:45.370 --> 00:09:47.929 is the critical divergence. The United States... 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:51.299 was not bombed. Right. We did not have rubble 00:09:51.299 --> 00:09:54.659 in our city centers. We had intact functioning 00:09:54.659 --> 00:09:58.200 if crowded cities. But American planners and 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:01.440 politicians adopted the exact same logic of reconstruction. 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:04.240 They treated their own cities as if they had 00:10:04.240 --> 00:10:07.129 been destroyed by war. They treated the slums 00:10:07.129 --> 00:10:09.370 as an internal enemy that had to be defeated 00:10:09.370 --> 00:10:11.769 with the same kind of total war mentality that 00:10:11.769 --> 00:10:14.470 they had just used on external enemies. And the 00:10:14.470 --> 00:10:16.669 mechanism they created to do this was the Housing 00:10:16.669 --> 00:10:19.350 Act of 1949. I want to drill down on this act 00:10:19.350 --> 00:10:21.629 because the financial structure of it seems to 00:10:21.629 --> 00:10:23.809 be the key to understanding why everything happened 00:10:23.809 --> 00:10:25.470 the way it did. It wasn't just the government 00:10:25.470 --> 00:10:27.899 building houses, was it? No, and that's a really 00:10:27.899 --> 00:10:30.980 common misconception. The Housing Act of 1949 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:34.080 created a partnership, a mechanism, where the 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:36.419 federal government provided loans and grants 00:10:36.419 --> 00:10:39.360 to cities. Okay. The cities then used that money 00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:42.460 to exercise eminent domain, that's the power 00:10:42.460 --> 00:10:45.399 to take private property for public use, to acquire 00:10:45.399 --> 00:10:49.279 all the land in a designated slum area. Then 00:10:49.279 --> 00:10:52.399 the city would pay to clear a land, demolish 00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:55.059 the buildings, and prepare the site for new construction. 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:58.600 So the taxpayer bears the full cost of the destruction 00:10:58.600 --> 00:11:02.059 and the site prep. 100 % correct. And then, and 00:11:02.059 --> 00:11:04.279 this is the kicker, the city would sell that 00:11:04.279 --> 00:11:06.940 cleared, prepped land to a private developer 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:09.700 at a huge discount. It was called the write -down. 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:12.340 So it was a massive subsidy for private development. 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:14.299 You're basically saying the public absorbs the 00:11:14.299 --> 00:11:16.840 loss and the private developer gets cheap, clean 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:19.889 land to build on. That's precisely it. The argument 00:11:19.889 --> 00:11:22.350 at the time was that the cost of buying and clearing 00:11:22.350 --> 00:11:24.649 slumland was just too high for the free market 00:11:24.649 --> 00:11:27.070 to handle on its own. No developer would buy 00:11:27.070 --> 00:11:29.789 a block of tenements, evict 500 tenants and tear 00:11:29.789 --> 00:11:31.690 it all down. It just wouldn't be profitable. 00:11:31.950 --> 00:11:34.009 So the government stepped in to do the dirty 00:11:34.009 --> 00:11:36.490 work. They did the dirty work and they absorbed 00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:39.970 the financial loss, effectively assembling the 00:11:39.970 --> 00:11:42.990 land for private capital to then swoop in and 00:11:42.990 --> 00:11:45.470 profit from. And then the Housing Act of 1954 00:11:45.470 --> 00:11:47.889 comes along and kind of rebrands it, right? It 00:11:47.889 --> 00:11:51.029 does. It shifted the terminology from urban redevelopment 00:11:51.029 --> 00:11:54.450 to the much friendlier sounding urban renewal. 00:11:55.329 --> 00:11:57.309 There's that word again. They also introduced 00:11:57.309 --> 00:12:00.429 FHA -backed mortgages for these new developments, 00:12:00.529 --> 00:12:03.210 which just greased the wheels even further. It 00:12:03.210 --> 00:12:06.210 made it incredibly, incredibly profitable to 00:12:06.210 --> 00:12:08.509 destroy the old and build the new. But we have 00:12:08.509 --> 00:12:11.289 to ask the question, who was living in the old? 00:12:12.149 --> 00:12:14.529 When the planners and politicians drew those 00:12:14.529 --> 00:12:17.049 red lines around the blighted areas on the map, 00:12:17.549 --> 00:12:19.889 Who were they circling? The data is stark and 00:12:19.889 --> 00:12:22.009 it's completely undeniable. The blight label 00:12:22.009 --> 00:12:24.570 was overwhelmingly disproportionately targeted 00:12:24.570 --> 00:12:26.870 at black and immigrant neighborhoods. This brings 00:12:26.870 --> 00:12:28.789 us to the human cost. I mean, we can talk about 00:12:28.789 --> 00:12:31.350 legislation and finance all day, but the reality 00:12:31.350 --> 00:12:33.629 on the ground was families watching their homes, 00:12:33.710 --> 00:12:35.870 their churches, their businesses get bulldozed. 00:12:35.950 --> 00:12:38.830 James Baldwin, the great novelist and social 00:12:38.830 --> 00:12:41.769 critic, he didn't mince words. In an interview 00:12:41.769 --> 00:12:45.370 in the 1960s, he famously said. Urban renewal 00:12:45.370 --> 00:12:48.730 is Negro removal. That's a gut punch of a phrase. 00:12:48.950 --> 00:12:51.169 It was a play on words, but it was statistically 00:12:51.169 --> 00:12:54.409 accurate. In city after city, African -American 00:12:54.409 --> 00:12:57.389 communities were displaced at rates far, far 00:12:57.389 --> 00:13:00.629 higher than any other group. And the deep tragedy 00:13:00.629 --> 00:13:03.389 was that, especially in the early years under 00:13:03.389 --> 00:13:07.250 that 1949 act, there was often no legal requirement 00:13:07.250 --> 00:13:10.629 to provide any replacement housing. So they just 00:13:10.629 --> 00:13:12.649 evicted them? It was just, here's a check for 00:13:12.649 --> 00:13:15.830 your house, now get out. essentially. And usually 00:13:15.830 --> 00:13:18.590 the check was for the fair market value of a 00:13:18.590 --> 00:13:20.830 home in an area that the government itself had 00:13:20.830 --> 00:13:23.049 just declared blighted, which was, you know, 00:13:23.049 --> 00:13:25.370 peanuts. So it's not enough to buy anything comparable 00:13:25.370 --> 00:13:27.830 anywhere else. Not even close. So these families 00:13:27.830 --> 00:13:29.330 were pushed out of their communities or social 00:13:29.330 --> 00:13:31.009 networks were shattered and they were forced 00:13:31.009 --> 00:13:32.950 to find housing in other parts of the city. But 00:13:32.950 --> 00:13:35.409 because of segregation and redlining, their options 00:13:35.409 --> 00:13:37.929 were severely limited. They usually ended up 00:13:37.929 --> 00:13:40.289 squeezing into already overcrowded neighborhoods 00:13:40.289 --> 00:13:43.289 nearby. Which just spreads the overcrowding and 00:13:43.289 --> 00:13:46.360 the blight. new areas. It created a vicious cycle. 00:13:46.500 --> 00:13:48.460 Let's look at some specific case studies here, 00:13:48.539 --> 00:13:50.940 because the scale of this is hard to grasp without 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:53.720 concrete examples. The outline mentions Berman 00:13:53.720 --> 00:13:56.659 v. Parker. This was a Supreme Court case involving 00:13:56.659 --> 00:14:00.519 southwest Washington, D .C. This is a landmark 00:14:00.519 --> 00:14:04.259 moment, a crucial turning point. In the 1950s, 00:14:04.259 --> 00:14:07.659 planners targeted southwest D .C. It was a predominantly 00:14:07.659 --> 00:14:10.019 African -American neighborhood working class. 00:14:10.399 --> 00:14:13.899 They argued it was unsanitary and blighted. Okay. 00:14:14.019 --> 00:14:16.840 They utilized eminent domain to seize all the 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:19.600 properties. The plaintiffs, the homeowners argued, 00:14:19.779 --> 00:14:23.139 hey, my specific building is emblaided. My department 00:14:23.139 --> 00:14:25.460 store is fine. You can't take it just because 00:14:25.460 --> 00:14:27.440 the neighborhood around it is poor. That seems 00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:29.039 like a reasonable argument. What did the Supreme 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:31.000 Court say? They ruled against the homeowners 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:33.879 unanimously. They established the principle that 00:14:33.879 --> 00:14:35.779 the government could take property not just for 00:14:35.779 --> 00:14:38.019 a specific public structure like a school or 00:14:38.019 --> 00:14:41.039 a road, but for the broader, more abstract goal 00:14:41.039 --> 00:14:44.179 of community redevelopment. It greenlit the entire 00:14:44.179 --> 00:14:47.799 practice. It absolutely did. It gave the constitutional 00:14:47.799 --> 00:14:50.460 green light to wholesale clearance of entire 00:14:50.460 --> 00:14:53.700 neighborhoods. And in southwest D .C., thousands 00:14:53.700 --> 00:14:56.299 of families were displaced. The historic community 00:14:56.299 --> 00:14:59.440 was just erased. And it wasn't just D .C. The 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:01.659 notes mention the Hill District in Pittsburgh. 00:15:02.190 --> 00:15:04.610 The Hill District was a cultural phenomenon. 00:15:04.929 --> 00:15:07.870 I mean, it was known as the Harlem of Pittsburgh. 00:15:08.370 --> 00:15:11.049 It was the center of the jazz scene, home to 00:15:11.049 --> 00:15:13.929 playwright August Wilson, a place with a deep, 00:15:13.950 --> 00:15:16.370 vibrant social fabric. How many people lived 00:15:16.370 --> 00:15:19.009 there? About 8 ,000 residents. The city declared 00:15:19.009 --> 00:15:21.929 it blighted and cleared nearly 100 acres. And 00:15:21.929 --> 00:15:23.990 what did they build? What was so important that 00:15:23.990 --> 00:15:26.649 it justified wiping out a community of 8 ,000 00:15:26.649 --> 00:15:29.830 people? The Civic Arena. Yeah. A sports venue. 00:15:29.950 --> 00:15:32.169 They traded a community of 8 ,000 people for 00:15:32.169 --> 00:15:34.590 a hockey rink. A hockey rink and a massive parking 00:15:34.590 --> 00:15:36.570 lot. And this is what we mean when we talk about 00:15:36.570 --> 00:15:39.549 that tension between progress and place. To the 00:15:39.549 --> 00:15:42.350 city planners, a shiny new arena was progress. 00:15:42.529 --> 00:15:45.370 It put Pittsburgh on the map. It brought in suburban 00:15:45.370 --> 00:15:48.429 dollars for games. But to the people of the Hill 00:15:48.429 --> 00:15:50.669 District, it was the erasure of their entire 00:15:50.669 --> 00:15:53.929 world. The collective memory of that place was 00:15:53.929 --> 00:15:57.600 just severed. We see the same story in eastern 00:15:57.600 --> 00:15:59.700 Pennsylvania with the destruction of Syrian Town, 00:15:59.899 --> 00:16:02.299 which was a multi -ethnic hub. We see it in almost 00:16:02.299 --> 00:16:05.820 every single major American city. But there was 00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:07.879 another tool of renewal being built at the same 00:16:07.879 --> 00:16:10.100 time that was arguably even more destructive 00:16:10.100 --> 00:16:12.879 than the housing projects. The highway. The Interstate 00:16:12.879 --> 00:16:15.279 Highway. The Federal -Aid Highway Act of 1956. 00:16:15.779 --> 00:16:18.059 This was the largest public works project in 00:16:18.059 --> 00:16:21.019 American history. The stated goal was to connect 00:16:21.019 --> 00:16:23.559 the country for commerce and defense. But in 00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:26.059 the cities, the goal was to facilitate the suburban 00:16:26.059 --> 00:16:28.379 commute. Bring the white -collar workers in from 00:16:28.379 --> 00:16:30.019 the suburbs in the morning, get them out at night. 00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:32.580 Exactly. But to bring a six - or eight -lane 00:16:32.580 --> 00:16:34.700 freeway into the center of a dense city requires 00:16:34.700 --> 00:16:38.000 a massive amount of land. And the planners had 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:39.919 to decide where to put these highways. And they 00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:41.679 followed the path of least political resistance. 00:16:42.330 --> 00:16:45.590 Of course. Which means they didn't bulldoze the 00:16:45.590 --> 00:16:47.769 wealthy neighborhoods. They didn't go through 00:16:47.769 --> 00:16:50.470 the country club district. No. Those people had 00:16:50.470 --> 00:16:53.350 lawyers and political connections. They replaced 00:16:53.350 --> 00:16:56.789 tax -paying neighborhoods with tax -exempt concrete. 00:16:57.309 --> 00:17:00.250 Precisely. It accelerated the very decline they 00:17:00.250 --> 00:17:02.409 were supposedly trying to stop. It is a heavy, 00:17:02.429 --> 00:17:04.609 heavy history. But people didn't just, you know, 00:17:04.609 --> 00:17:07.259 take it lying down. There was a backlash. And 00:17:07.259 --> 00:17:09.140 you can't talk about the backlash without talking 00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.779 about Jane Jacobs. The patron saint of the sidewalk 00:17:11.779 --> 00:17:16.240 and absolute legend. So 1961, she publishes her 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:18.660 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 00:17:19.740 --> 00:17:23.039 Why was this book such a bombshell? Because up 00:17:23.039 --> 00:17:26.410 until that point. The experts, the planners, 00:17:26.589 --> 00:17:28.470 the architects, the bureaucrats, they held all 00:17:28.470 --> 00:17:30.289 the cards. They had the degrees, the titles. 00:17:30.430 --> 00:17:32.589 They went to meetings with big maps and said, 00:17:32.630 --> 00:17:35.529 we know how to fix the city. Jane Jacobs was 00:17:35.529 --> 00:17:37.509 a journalist. Right. She wasn't a planner. She 00:17:37.509 --> 00:17:39.690 wasn't a planner. She was a mother living in 00:17:39.690 --> 00:17:41.869 Greenwich Village looking out her window. She 00:17:41.869 --> 00:17:44.710 was a regular person, an observer. And she used 00:17:44.710 --> 00:17:47.450 that perspective to systematically dismantle 00:17:47.450 --> 00:17:50.180 their entire philosophy. She argued that the 00:17:50.180 --> 00:17:52.180 planners were looking at cities from an airplane 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:54.819 view. They were looking for geometry for order 00:17:54.819 --> 00:17:57.440 for the separation of functions. She looked at 00:17:57.440 --> 00:17:59.420 the city from the sidewalk. The famous ballet 00:17:59.420 --> 00:18:02.119 of the sidewalk. Yes. She pointed out that what 00:18:02.119 --> 00:18:05.619 the planners called chaos the mix of shops apartments 00:18:05.619 --> 00:18:08.759 bars people sitting on stoops was actually a 00:18:08.759 --> 00:18:11.559 very sophisticated system of social order and 00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:13.930 safety. She coined the phrase eyes on the street, 00:18:14.029 --> 00:18:16.109 right? Eyes on the street. A busy street is a 00:18:16.109 --> 00:18:18.170 safe street because shopkeepers and neighbors 00:18:18.170 --> 00:18:21.130 are constantly informally watching out for each 00:18:21.130 --> 00:18:23.480 other. So when the planners came in and separated 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:25.779 everything housing over here in this sterile 00:18:25.779 --> 00:18:27.579 tower, the shopping mall way over there, the 00:18:27.579 --> 00:18:29.680 park over there, they were actually removing 00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:31.619 the natural safety mechanisms of the community. 00:18:31.900 --> 00:18:35.339 Exactly. She also argued that cities need old 00:18:35.339 --> 00:18:38.000 buildings. Why old buildings? Because old buildings 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:40.940 have lower rents and lower rents allow for small 00:18:40.940 --> 00:18:44.079 businesses, for artists, for weird little bookshops, 00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:47.099 for diversity. New construction is always expensive, 00:18:47.259 --> 00:18:49.900 so it only attracts big chain stores and banks. 00:18:50.099 --> 00:18:53.150 It's sterile. She famously went toe to toe with 00:18:53.150 --> 00:18:55.390 Robert Moses, the master builder of New York, 00:18:55.450 --> 00:18:57.490 who wanted to run a highway right through lower 00:18:57.490 --> 00:19:00.230 Manhattan. And she won. She and her community 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.230 activists beat him. And that victory sparked 00:19:03.230 --> 00:19:05.309 a movement. You had the freeway revolts popping 00:19:05.309 --> 00:19:07.569 up all across the country. San Francisco is a 00:19:07.569 --> 00:19:10.470 great example. Oh, huge. The state of California 00:19:10.470 --> 00:19:13.049 wanted to wrap San Francisco in freeways. It 00:19:13.049 --> 00:19:16.059 would have destroyed entire neighborhoods. And 00:19:16.059 --> 00:19:18.920 the citizens mobilized. The protests were so 00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:23.220 intense that in 1966, Mayor Joseph Alioto actually 00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:26.380 stood up and repudiated the entire urban renewal 00:19:26.380 --> 00:19:28.799 plan. And they stopped the freeways. They did. 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:31.400 If you go to San Francisco today, you can literally 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:33.799 see the stumps where the highways just stop in 00:19:33.799 --> 00:19:37.029 midair. The infamous Embarcadero Freeway was 00:19:37.029 --> 00:19:39.250 eventually torn down after the 1989 earthquake, 00:19:39.410 --> 00:19:41.990 and it completely reconnected the city to its 00:19:41.990 --> 00:19:44.150 waterfront. It was a huge victory. And Boston, 00:19:44.210 --> 00:19:46.250 too, right? Yes. Activists in Boston managed 00:19:46.250 --> 00:19:48.849 to stop the Southwest Expressway, although there's 00:19:48.849 --> 00:19:50.950 a tragic detail there. What's that? They stopped 00:19:50.950 --> 00:19:52.769 it after three miles of land had already been 00:19:52.769 --> 00:19:54.789 cleared, so the neighborhood was destroyed, the 00:19:54.789 --> 00:19:57.089 people were displaced, but the road was never 00:19:57.089 --> 00:19:59.430 actually built. That is a special kind of failure. 00:20:00.029 --> 00:20:03.460 Just a scar on the land. But these protests did 00:20:03.460 --> 00:20:06.059 lead to real policy changes, right? Yeah. I mean, 00:20:06.059 --> 00:20:08.539 we aren't doing 1950s -style slum clearance anymore. 00:20:08.759 --> 00:20:11.480 The policy definitely shifted. The pendulum swung. 00:20:11.640 --> 00:20:14.440 By the 1970s, you get the Uniform Relocation 00:20:14.440 --> 00:20:17.440 Assistance Act. And this finally, finally acknowledged 00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:19.519 that if the government takes your house, they 00:20:19.519 --> 00:20:21.700 actually owe you decent compensation for your 00:20:21.700 --> 00:20:23.980 moving expenses, not just the devalued price 00:20:23.980 --> 00:20:27.319 of your home. And then in 1974, the Community 00:20:27.319 --> 00:20:30.799 Development Block Grant, or CDBG program, changed 00:20:30.799 --> 00:20:33.950 the focus. Instead of federal money for demolish 00:20:33.950 --> 00:20:37.089 and rebuild, the focus shifted to rehabilitate 00:20:37.089 --> 00:20:40.430 and preserve. So less dynamite, more renovation. 00:20:40.809 --> 00:20:43.710 Generally, yes. The era of the federal bulldozer, 00:20:43.710 --> 00:20:45.869 for the most part, came to an end. I want to 00:20:45.869 --> 00:20:47.990 pivot now to the how. We've talked about the 00:20:47.990 --> 00:20:50.730 history, but what are the tools in the modern 00:20:50.730 --> 00:20:53.410 urban renewal toolbox? Because even if we aren't 00:20:53.410 --> 00:20:55.670 using the term slum clearance as much, the mechanisms 00:20:55.670 --> 00:20:58.150 of taking land still exist. They do. We touched 00:20:58.150 --> 00:21:00.599 on eminent domain earlier. But there is a modern 00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:02.920 case that really redefined it for the 21st century. 00:21:03.200 --> 00:21:06.420 Kelo v. City of New London. This case is absolutely 00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:09.000 critical for understanding modern redevelopment. 00:21:09.099 --> 00:21:12.339 It happened in 2005, and the fallout is still 00:21:12.339 --> 00:21:15.200 being felt today. So set the scene for us. What 00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:18.079 happened in New London? Okay, so you have Suzette 00:21:18.079 --> 00:21:20.759 Kelo. She owned a house in New London, Connecticut. 00:21:20.940 --> 00:21:23.240 It was a little pink house with a view of the 00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:26.309 water. Okay. Her neighborhood was not a slum. 00:21:26.329 --> 00:21:28.190 It was a working class neighborhood, maybe a 00:21:28.190 --> 00:21:31.049 bit tired, but perfectly fine. The city, however, 00:21:31.130 --> 00:21:33.349 was struggling economically, and they struck 00:21:33.349 --> 00:21:35.210 a deal with a private development corporation. 00:21:35.609 --> 00:21:38.089 They wanted to clear the entire neighborhood 00:21:38.089 --> 00:21:40.630 to build a new research facility and conference 00:21:40.630 --> 00:21:43.609 center, hoping to attract Pfizer, the pharmaceutical 00:21:43.609 --> 00:21:45.690 giant, which was building a new headquarters 00:21:45.690 --> 00:21:48.769 nearby. So the city tried to take her house using 00:21:48.769 --> 00:21:51.970 eminent domain. But usually eminent domain is 00:21:51.970 --> 00:21:56.470 for a clear public use, a road, a school, a military 00:21:56.470 --> 00:21:59.089 base. This was for a private developer. And that 00:21:59.089 --> 00:22:01.730 was exactly her argument. Kelo sued the city. 00:22:01.789 --> 00:22:03.950 She argued, you can't take my private property 00:22:03.950 --> 00:22:05.549 and give it to another private party just because 00:22:05.549 --> 00:22:08.049 they might pay more taxes than I do. Seems like 00:22:08.049 --> 00:22:09.990 a pretty foundational argument for property rights. 00:22:10.230 --> 00:22:12.759 What did the Supreme Court say? They ruled against 00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:16.339 her in a very controversial 5 -4 decision. They 00:22:16.339 --> 00:22:19.039 expanded the definition of public use to include 00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:22.299 public benefit. What does that mean? They said 00:22:22.299 --> 00:22:24.420 that because the new development might bring 00:22:24.420 --> 00:22:27.299 jobs and might bring more tax revenue, it served 00:22:27.299 --> 00:22:29.920 a public purpose and therefore the taking of 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:32.759 her home was constitutional. That feels like 00:22:32.759 --> 00:22:35.319 a massive loophole. Theoretically, couldn't a 00:22:35.319 --> 00:22:38.500 city use that logic to take my house and give 00:22:38.500 --> 00:22:40.579 it to a Walmart just because Walmart generates 00:22:40.579 --> 00:22:43.259 more tax revenue than I do? That was precisely 00:22:43.259 --> 00:22:45.579 the argument made in the dissenting opinion. 00:22:45.819 --> 00:22:48.099 It made every home and small business in the 00:22:48.099 --> 00:22:50.259 country vulnerable to corporate interests with 00:22:50.259 --> 00:22:53.819 a better development plan. But here is the tragic 00:22:53.819 --> 00:22:57.559 epilogue to the Kelo story. Oh, no. Suzette Kelo 00:22:57.559 --> 00:23:00.000 lost her home. Her neighbors lost their homes. 00:23:00.059 --> 00:23:02.980 The entire neighborhood was bulldozed. And then... 00:23:03.289 --> 00:23:05.750 The financing for the big development fell through. 00:23:05.890 --> 00:23:08.269 You're kidding me. Pfizer eventually pulled out 00:23:08.269 --> 00:23:10.630 of the area entirely. The development was never 00:23:10.630 --> 00:23:14.130 built. For years, the land where Suzette Kelo's 00:23:14.130 --> 00:23:16.970 little pink house stood was just a vacant field 00:23:16.970 --> 00:23:19.869 of weeds used as a dumping ground for storm debris. 00:23:20.109 --> 00:23:23.329 That is infuriating. It's just so senseless. 00:23:23.490 --> 00:23:25.849 It is the ultimate example of what's called speculative 00:23:25.849 --> 00:23:29.240 future development. And you see this Rust Belt 00:23:29.240 --> 00:23:31.799 phenomenon in places like Syracuse, Cincinnati, 00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:36.019 Niagara Falls. Cities get desperate for a turnaround. 00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:38.619 They clear entire neighborhoods for a developer 00:23:38.619 --> 00:23:41.000 who promises the moon. And then the market shifts. 00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:42.940 The market shifts, the developer walks away, 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:45.339 and the city is left with nothing but a surface 00:23:45.339 --> 00:23:47.759 parking lot where a community used to be. Let's 00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:49.319 talk about another financial tool I see mentioned 00:23:49.319 --> 00:23:53.240 constantly in these documents. TIFF. Tax Increment 00:23:53.240 --> 00:23:56.339 Financing. It sounds boring, but apparently... 00:23:56.539 --> 00:23:58.380 It's how everything gets built these days. TIF 00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:00.839 is the magic wand of modern municipal finance. 00:24:01.160 --> 00:24:02.980 It's a little complex, but it's really important 00:24:02.980 --> 00:24:05.220 to understand. Okay, walk us through it. Here 00:24:05.220 --> 00:24:08.220 is how it works, simply. A city designates a 00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:10.880 certain area as a TIF district, an area they 00:24:10.880 --> 00:24:13.339 want to redevelop. They look at how much tax 00:24:13.339 --> 00:24:15.539 revenue that district is generating right now. 00:24:16.059 --> 00:24:18.259 Let's say, for argument's sake, it's a million 00:24:18.259 --> 00:24:21.000 dollars a year. They freeze that number. That's 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:22.759 the baseline. Okay, baseline is set at a million. 00:24:23.130 --> 00:24:26.309 Then the city borrows a bunch of money by issuing 00:24:26.309 --> 00:24:28.930 bonds, and they use that money to fix up the 00:24:28.930 --> 00:24:31.750 infrastructure in that district. New roads, new 00:24:31.750 --> 00:24:35.069 sewers, new sidewalks, maybe a park. The theory 00:24:35.069 --> 00:24:37.309 is that these public improvements will make the 00:24:37.309 --> 00:24:39.789 area more attractive, so property values will 00:24:39.789 --> 00:24:43.130 rise. And when property values rise, tax revenues 00:24:43.130 --> 00:24:46.289 rise. Exactly. But here's the trick. The schools, 00:24:46.529 --> 00:24:49.170 the police, the fire department, they still only 00:24:49.170 --> 00:24:51.289 get that original frozen million dollars from 00:24:51.289 --> 00:24:53.730 that district. All the new tax money, the increment 00:24:53.730 --> 00:24:56.670 above that baseline, doesn't go into the general 00:24:56.670 --> 00:24:59.109 fund. It goes directly into a special account 00:24:59.109 --> 00:25:01.369 to pay off the debt for the improvements. So 00:25:01.369 --> 00:25:03.029 they were betting on the future to pay for the 00:25:03.029 --> 00:25:05.630 present. That's a perfect way to put it. It allows 00:25:05.630 --> 00:25:08.089 cities to fund big development projects without 00:25:08.089 --> 00:25:10.349 technically raising taxes on everyone today. 00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:13.720 When it works, it can be a great tool. But if 00:25:13.720 --> 00:25:15.720 the property values don't rise as much as they 00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:18.359 predicted, or if critics argue they would have 00:25:18.359 --> 00:25:20.900 risen anyway without the subsidy, then you're 00:25:20.900 --> 00:25:23.279 just diverting tax money away from schools and 00:25:23.279 --> 00:25:25.779 essential services to pay off a bad bet made 00:25:25.779 --> 00:25:27.920 years ago. Let's move to a different kind of 00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:32.160 strategy. Event -led renewal. The Olympics strategy. 00:25:32.500 --> 00:25:34.759 Or the Bilbao effect, as it's often called. Right. 00:25:34.819 --> 00:25:36.859 Let's start with Bilbao. This is the Guggenheim 00:25:36.859 --> 00:25:40.880 Museum story. Yes. Bilbao, Spain was a gritty, 00:25:40.900 --> 00:25:44.259 fading industrial port city in the 1990s. It 00:25:44.259 --> 00:25:46.319 was not a tourist destination. They decided to 00:25:46.319 --> 00:25:48.900 gamble and gamble big. They hired the famous 00:25:48.900 --> 00:25:51.160 architect Frank Gehry to build the Guggenheim 00:25:51.160 --> 00:25:53.160 Museum right on the derelict waterfront. That 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.700 crazy titanium spaceship of a building. It is 00:25:55.700 --> 00:25:58.900 an architectural masterpiece and it worked. It 00:25:58.900 --> 00:26:02.000 completely worked. Millions of tourists flocked 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:04.440 to see the building itself. It revitalized the 00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:07.259 local economy. It completely rebranded the city 00:26:07.259 --> 00:26:10.039 from industrial rust to cultural hotspot. And 00:26:10.039 --> 00:26:12.339 it spurred all kinds of other developments around 00:26:12.339 --> 00:26:15.380 it. And now every post -industrial city in the 00:26:15.380 --> 00:26:19.299 world wants an iconic museum or a star architect 00:26:19.299 --> 00:26:21.799 designed concert hall to save them. They do. 00:26:21.859 --> 00:26:24.160 They all want their own Bilbao effect. But does 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:26.519 it usually work? Or is Bilbao the exception that 00:26:26.519 --> 00:26:28.750 proves the rule? Bilbao is largely the exception. 00:26:29.029 --> 00:26:31.410 For every Bilbao, there are dozens of cities 00:26:31.410 --> 00:26:34.130 that built a massive convention center or a jagged 00:26:34.130 --> 00:26:36.369 glass museum that sits empty most of the year. 00:26:36.529 --> 00:26:39.390 You can't just drop a shiny object into a city 00:26:39.390 --> 00:26:42.490 and expect it to fix deep systemic economic issues. 00:26:42.710 --> 00:26:44.490 Let's take this global for a bit. We've been 00:26:44.490 --> 00:26:47.670 very U .S. centric, but urban renewal is a worldwide 00:26:47.670 --> 00:26:49.910 phenomenon. Let's look the U .K. again, but more 00:26:49.910 --> 00:26:52.750 recently, the London Docklands. The Docklands 00:26:52.750 --> 00:26:56.500 is a fascinating and controversial case. In the 00:26:56.500 --> 00:27:00.059 1980s, the shipping industry had moved to huge 00:27:00.059 --> 00:27:03.160 container ports further down the river. The historic 00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:06.059 East London docks were just miles of abandoned, 00:27:06.339 --> 00:27:09.799 derelict wasteland. The Thatcher government created 00:27:09.799 --> 00:27:12.920 a special Urban Development Corporation to redevelop 00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:15.539 it. And they specifically bypassed the local 00:27:15.539 --> 00:27:17.660 planning councils to speed things up. And they 00:27:17.660 --> 00:27:19.619 built Canary Wharf. They built Canary Wharf, 00:27:19.720 --> 00:27:21.720 which is basically a second financial district 00:27:21.720 --> 00:27:25.220 to rival the historic city of London. Massive 00:27:25.220 --> 00:27:28.160 skyscrapers, global banks, high -end apartments. 00:27:29.119 --> 00:27:30.819 Economically, you can't argue with it. It generated 00:27:30.819 --> 00:27:34.240 huge wealth and tax revenue. But socially? Social, 00:27:34.319 --> 00:27:36.440 it's very complicated. It was heavily criticized 00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:38.539 for being an island of incredible wealth that 00:27:38.539 --> 00:27:40.180 was just dropped into one of the poorest parts. 00:27:40.299 --> 00:27:43.039 of London. You have bankers making millions a 00:27:43.039 --> 00:27:45.299 year in these glass towers. And just a few streets 00:27:45.299 --> 00:27:47.240 away, you have some of the most deprived communities 00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:49.900 in the country that saw very little trickle -down 00:27:49.900 --> 00:27:52.559 benefit from it all. Now, let's go to Singapore. 00:27:53.799 --> 00:27:56.039 Whenever I read about urban planning or public 00:27:56.039 --> 00:27:59.059 policy, Singapore is held up as the gold standard 00:27:59.059 --> 00:28:02.420 of getting things done. Singapore is the success 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:06.220 against all odds narrative. In the 1960s, it 00:28:06.220 --> 00:28:09.119 was a tiny island nation with no natural resources 00:28:09.119 --> 00:28:11.700 and a huge percentage of the population lived 00:28:11.700 --> 00:28:14.200 in squatter settlements and overcrowded, unsanitary 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:17.299 slums. Right. The government, led by Lee Kuan 00:28:17.299 --> 00:28:20.140 Yew, embarked on one of the most aggressive and 00:28:20.140 --> 00:28:22.500 comprehensive public housing programs in world 00:28:22.500 --> 00:28:25.420 history. The HDB, the Housing and Development 00:28:25.420 --> 00:28:28.160 Board. They cleared the slums and moved basically 00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:30.420 everyone into high -rise apartment blocks. Yes. 00:28:30.539 --> 00:28:33.839 And today, Singapore is famously clean, efficient, 00:28:34.019 --> 00:28:36.720 safe, and wealthy. Over 80 % of the population 00:28:36.720 --> 00:28:39.079 lives in this public housing. It's a remarkable 00:28:39.079 --> 00:28:41.740 achievement. But there is a trade -off. There's 00:28:41.740 --> 00:28:43.359 always a trade -off. A scholar named Professor 00:28:43.359 --> 00:28:46.279 Kenneth Paul Tan has written about this. He argues 00:28:46.279 --> 00:28:48.420 that the constant tearing down and rebuilding 00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:51.400 this national obsession with the new has led 00:28:51.400 --> 00:28:54.119 to a profound loss of a sense of place. The collective 00:28:54.119 --> 00:28:56.380 memory again. Exactly. If the building you grew 00:28:56.380 --> 00:28:58.480 up in is gone and the shop your grandfather went 00:28:58.480 --> 00:29:01.160 to is gone and the entire street layout has changed 00:29:01.160 --> 00:29:03.740 three times in your lifetime, do you still feel 00:29:03.740 --> 00:29:06.960 rooted to your city? Tan suggests that the culture 00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:09.619 of comfort, the universal air conditioning, the 00:29:09.619 --> 00:29:12.299 pristine shopping malls is a kind of compensation 00:29:12.299 --> 00:29:14.779 for the loss of heritage and community memory. 00:29:14.980 --> 00:29:16.980 That's a fascinating psychological tradeoff. 00:29:17.559 --> 00:29:20.400 Comfort for memory. What about China? The scale 00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:22.900 there must just be mind -boggling. It is unparalleled. 00:29:22.900 --> 00:29:25.119 For the last 30 years, the main strategy was 00:29:25.119 --> 00:29:27.359 called Old Town Reconstruction. And it was just 00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:30.220 massive, massive demolition. Entire historic 00:29:30.220 --> 00:29:32.819 neighborhoods, the famous Hutongs in Beijing, 00:29:33.099 --> 00:29:36.099 the Lilong in Shanghai, were bulldozed to make 00:29:36.099 --> 00:29:38.319 way for high -rise apartments and shopping centers. 00:29:38.579 --> 00:29:40.519 But I've heard that is shifting recently. There's 00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:43.039 a change in approach. There is, yes. In the last 00:29:43.039 --> 00:29:45.359 few years, particularly in cities like Shanghai 00:29:45.359 --> 00:29:48.319 and Guangzhou, there is a big move towards micro 00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:50.730 -renovation. So instead of drawing the character 00:29:50.730 --> 00:29:53.849 Chai, which means demolish on the wall, they're 00:29:53.849 --> 00:29:56.170 going in and fixing the plumbing, adding modern 00:29:56.170 --> 00:29:58.230 public toilets, repairing roofs, reinforcing 00:29:58.230 --> 00:30:01.190 structures, but keeping the old alleyways and 00:30:01.190 --> 00:30:04.190 the community fabric intact. It's an acknowledgment 00:30:04.190 --> 00:30:07.390 that the historic fabric has a value that a generic 00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:10.490 concrete tower just doesn't. I want to touch 00:30:10.490 --> 00:30:12.529 on one more global example from the notes because 00:30:12.529 --> 00:30:15.690 it's so unique in its motivation. Israel, the 00:30:15.690 --> 00:30:18.339 Tama 38 program. This is really interesting because 00:30:18.339 --> 00:30:20.940 the primary driver isn't economics or aesthetics. 00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:24.640 It's safety. Safety. Yeah. Israel has a lot of 00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:27.519 old concrete apartment blocks called binyaneh, 00:30:27.599 --> 00:30:30.240 reikavet, which means train buildings because 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:32.720 they're long and linear. They were built quickly 00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:35.460 and cheaply in the 50s and 60s. The problem is 00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:37.960 they are not earthquake safe and Israel sits 00:30:37.960 --> 00:30:40.119 on a major fault line. And they don't have bomb 00:30:40.119 --> 00:30:43.500 shelters. Exactly. And a safe room, or mobbed, 00:30:43.599 --> 00:30:46.299 is a mandatory requirement in all new construction 00:30:46.299 --> 00:30:48.759 in Israel. Israel now. But the state can't afford 00:30:48.759 --> 00:30:50.539 to tear down and rebuild all these thousands 00:30:50.539 --> 00:30:53.859 of old buildings. So they created Tama 38. What 00:30:53.859 --> 00:30:56.660 is that? It's a market mechanism. A private developer 00:30:56.660 --> 00:30:59.279 comes to one of these old buildings. They agree 00:30:59.279 --> 00:31:02.160 to seismically reinforce the entire building's 00:31:02.160 --> 00:31:04.460 foundation against earthquakes. And they add 00:31:04.460 --> 00:31:07.980 a brand new concrete reinforced safe room to 00:31:07.980 --> 00:31:11.680 every single existing apartment. For free. How 00:31:11.680 --> 00:31:13.660 does the developer get paid? Here's the clever 00:31:13.660 --> 00:31:16.279 part. In exchange for doing all that work for 00:31:16.279 --> 00:31:18.779 free, the city grants the developer the right 00:31:18.779 --> 00:31:21.940 to build two or three new floors of luxury penthouse 00:31:21.940 --> 00:31:24.700 apartments on top of the old building. They sell 00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:27.180 those new units at a huge profit. That is incredibly 00:31:27.180 --> 00:31:29.079 clever. You're financing public safety through 00:31:29.079 --> 00:31:31.480 private densification? It is. It's not perfect. 00:31:31.539 --> 00:31:34.220 It causes parking nightmares and it strains the 00:31:34.220 --> 00:31:36.700 old infrastructure. But it's a really creative 00:31:36.700 --> 00:31:39.220 way to renew the housing stock without displacing 00:31:39.220 --> 00:31:41.369 a single one of the original residents. Okay, 00:31:41.470 --> 00:31:43.329 we have to talk about a failure, a spectacular 00:31:43.329 --> 00:31:46.109 one. The outline points us directly to Niagara 00:31:46.109 --> 00:31:49.450 Falls, New York. Aw, poor Niagara Falls. It is 00:31:49.450 --> 00:31:52.289 the textbook case study of how not to do urban 00:31:52.289 --> 00:31:55.630 renewal. Set the scene. It's the 1960s. You have 00:31:55.630 --> 00:31:57.470 one of the great natural wonders of the world 00:31:57.470 --> 00:31:59.549 right there. Millions of tourists are coming 00:31:59.549 --> 00:32:02.079 every year. What do they do? The city leaders 00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:04.579 felt that the downtown area that served the tourists 00:32:04.579 --> 00:32:07.680 was tacky and outdated. They wanted to modernize. 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:10.359 So they demolished most of the historic downtown. 00:32:10.579 --> 00:32:13.519 They knocked down the downtown of a tourist city. 00:32:13.579 --> 00:32:15.960 The very thing the tourists came to see besides 00:32:15.960 --> 00:32:19.000 the water. Yes. And they replaced it with a series 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:22.549 of what were called silver bullets. Big mega 00:32:22.549 --> 00:32:25.309 projects. A massive convention center designed 00:32:25.309 --> 00:32:28.269 by the famous architect Philip Johnson. A factory 00:32:28.269 --> 00:32:31.250 outlet mall called the Rainbow Center. And a 00:32:31.250 --> 00:32:34.450 huge enclosed glass greenhouse thing called the 00:32:34.450 --> 00:32:36.930 Winter Garden. And why was this a complete disaster? 00:32:37.480 --> 00:32:39.720 Because they ignored every single fundamental 00:32:39.720 --> 00:32:42.000 rule of how a city works, especially a tourist 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:44.599 city. The convention center was placed physically 00:32:44.599 --> 00:32:46.779 across Falls Street, the main artery that led 00:32:46.779 --> 00:32:48.720 to the falls. It blocked the flow of traffic 00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:50.980 and pedestrians. You could no longer see the 00:32:50.980 --> 00:32:53.039 falls from the city. They turned their back on 00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:55.640 their main attraction. They literally did. The 00:32:55.640 --> 00:32:58.140 Winter Garden was a giant glass wall that blocked 00:32:58.140 --> 00:33:00.779 the street grid. The mall was internally focused. 00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:03.519 It killed all the street life. They tried to 00:33:03.519 --> 00:33:06.700 turn an outdoor, walkable city into an indoor, 00:33:06.940 --> 00:33:09.420 mall -based suburban experience. How did that 00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:12.519 work out? It was a catastrophe. The small businesses 00:33:12.519 --> 00:33:16.000 all died. Tourists would drive in, park in a 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:18.460 massive concrete ramp, go to the mall and then 00:33:18.460 --> 00:33:21.339 leave. There was no reason to walk around. And 00:33:21.339 --> 00:33:24.559 within 20 to 30 years, the mall failed. The Winter 00:33:24.559 --> 00:33:26.799 Garden was demolished and the convention center 00:33:26.799 --> 00:33:29.039 was repurposed because it was obsolete. They 00:33:29.039 --> 00:33:31.180 destroyed the city to save it and ended up with 00:33:31.180 --> 00:33:34.160 neither. Exactly. It shows that renewal isn't 00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:36.539 just about building big, shiny things. It's about 00:33:36.539 --> 00:33:39.859 the connective tissue, the street grid. ability 00:33:39.859 --> 00:33:42.559 to walk from A to B and see something interesting 00:33:42.559 --> 00:33:45.299 along the way. So let's bring it up to the present 00:33:45.299 --> 00:33:48.119 day. We are in the 2020s. The bulldozers are 00:33:48.119 --> 00:33:50.700 mostly parked. What are the modern trends in 00:33:50.700 --> 00:33:53.160 renewal? Well, we are seeing the rise of the 00:33:53.160 --> 00:33:55.140 culturepreneur. That sounds like a buzzword. 00:33:55.400 --> 00:33:58.599 It is 100 percent, but it describes a real strategy. 00:33:58.920 --> 00:34:01.819 It's about using culture art galleries, pop -up 00:34:01.819 --> 00:34:05.599 venues, urban beaches, food truck festivals to 00:34:05.599 --> 00:34:08.960 revitalize an area. Instead of one giant top 00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:12.780 -down government plan, you have smaller, temporary, 00:34:12.940 --> 00:34:15.380 bottom -up interventions that create a vibe. 00:34:15.579 --> 00:34:17.380 And that vibe attracts people, which eventually 00:34:17.380 --> 00:34:19.460 attracts more permanent investment. That's the 00:34:19.460 --> 00:34:21.880 theory. And then you have green renewal, which 00:34:21.880 --> 00:34:24.059 is a huge trend. Like the High Line in New York. 00:34:24.429 --> 00:34:27.469 The high line is the global poster child. Taking 00:34:27.469 --> 00:34:29.989 a piece of obsolete industrial infrastructure 00:34:29.989 --> 00:34:32.750 and turning it into a beautiful, elevated park. 00:34:33.010 --> 00:34:35.429 Or you see projects like the Regenesis Project 00:34:35.429 --> 00:34:37.929 in South Carolina, which focused on cleaning 00:34:37.929 --> 00:34:39.829 up industrial pollution and creating community 00:34:39.829 --> 00:34:42.510 gardens. It frames renewal around environmental 00:34:42.510 --> 00:34:45.070 justice and sustainability, not just economics. 00:34:45.409 --> 00:34:47.789 But even with beautiful parks and cool art galleries, 00:34:48.090 --> 00:34:49.969 we still have the elephant in the room, don't 00:34:49.969 --> 00:34:52.489 we? Gentrification. That is the gentrification 00:34:52.489 --> 00:34:55.489 dilemma. It's the central problem of 21st century 00:34:55.489 --> 00:34:58.210 urban renewal. We might not be using dynamite 00:34:58.210 --> 00:35:00.929 anymore, but we have what's called indirect displacement. 00:35:01.309 --> 00:35:03.170 OK, so how does that work? The city improves 00:35:03.170 --> 00:35:05.730 a neighborhood. They add that beautiful park. 00:35:05.789 --> 00:35:07.570 They put in better streetlights, maybe a new 00:35:07.570 --> 00:35:11.030 bike lane. The neighborhood becomes more desirable. 00:35:11.329 --> 00:35:14.510 So what happens? Rents go up. Property taxes 00:35:14.510 --> 00:35:17.230 go up. The original low -income residents, the 00:35:17.230 --> 00:35:19.269 ones who stuck it out through all the bad times, 00:35:19.429 --> 00:35:22.110 suddenly can't afford to live in their own renewed 00:35:22.110 --> 00:35:24.449 neighborhood anymore. They get priced out. So 00:35:24.449 --> 00:35:26.289 the end result is the same as the bulldozer. 00:35:26.309 --> 00:35:29.570 The original community is gone. But the mechanism 00:35:29.570 --> 00:35:32.630 is market forces, not a wrecking ball. Exactly. 00:35:32.769 --> 00:35:34.789 And cities are really wrestling with this. It's 00:35:34.789 --> 00:35:38.250 a huge ethical problem. In 2016, the city of 00:35:38.250 --> 00:35:40.570 Portland, Oregon, formally apologized for its 00:35:40.570 --> 00:35:42.920 history of renewal. They apologized. They did. 00:35:43.039 --> 00:35:45.599 They admitted that urban renewal funds that were 00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:48.519 meant to help the poor were instead used to subsidize 00:35:48.519 --> 00:35:51.360 luxury apartments that pushed thousands of black 00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:53.099 residents out of their historic neighborhoods 00:35:53.099 --> 00:35:55.739 in North and Northeast Portland. So after all 00:35:55.739 --> 00:35:57.980 this, from the Devil's Acre to the High Line, 00:35:58.079 --> 00:36:01.300 from Baron Houseman to Suzette Kelo, how do we 00:36:01.300 --> 00:36:03.500 synthesize this? Is urban renewal a good thing 00:36:03.500 --> 00:36:06.230 or a bad thing? It is a tool. That is the only 00:36:06.230 --> 00:36:08.969 honest way to view it. A hammer can build a house 00:36:08.969 --> 00:36:11.989 or it can break a window. Urban renewal has, 00:36:12.150 --> 00:36:14.809 without question, cleared dangerous disease -ridden 00:36:14.809 --> 00:36:17.849 slums and created safer, healthier environments 00:36:17.849 --> 00:36:20.409 for millions of people. It has created powerful 00:36:20.409 --> 00:36:23.789 economic engines like Singapore or London's Canary 00:36:23.789 --> 00:36:27.179 Wharf. But the cost has so often been paid by 00:36:27.179 --> 00:36:29.679 the most vulnerable among us. The cost is that 00:36:29.679 --> 00:36:32.539 a collective memory. When you erase a Syrian 00:36:32.539 --> 00:36:35.559 town or a hill district or a black bottom, you 00:36:35.559 --> 00:36:37.739 are severing the connection people have to their 00:36:37.739 --> 00:36:39.940 own history. You are prioritizing a certain kind 00:36:39.940 --> 00:36:42.679 of efficiency, the highway, the mall, over the 00:36:42.679 --> 00:36:45.579 messy vitality of a real place. It brings us 00:36:45.579 --> 00:36:47.460 right back to that mission we started with, the 00:36:47.460 --> 00:36:49.719 constant battle between progress and place. And 00:36:49.719 --> 00:36:51.699 I think for you, for the listener, the so what 00:36:51.699 --> 00:36:54.260 here is to look at your own city. Next time you 00:36:54.260 --> 00:36:56.579 see a trendy new arts district or you drive over 00:36:56.579 --> 00:36:58.579 a highway overpass that cuts through a neighborhood, 00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:01.199 ask yourself, what was here before? Who lived 00:37:01.199 --> 00:37:04.099 here and where do they go? Exactly. Because the 00:37:04.099 --> 00:37:06.320 ground beneath our feet has layers of history. 00:37:06.949 --> 00:37:09.550 Most urban renewal is driven by the state deciding 00:37:09.550 --> 00:37:12.530 what is important based on its own narrative 00:37:12.530 --> 00:37:15.050 at that particular time. In the 50s, highways 00:37:15.050 --> 00:37:18.250 were important. Today, maybe it's tech campuses 00:37:18.250 --> 00:37:21.230 or biotech labs. And here's a final thought for 00:37:21.230 --> 00:37:23.849 you to chew on. We always assume that blight 00:37:23.849 --> 00:37:25.829 is something that happens to other neighborhoods, 00:37:26.070 --> 00:37:29.289 the so -called bad parts of town. But we've learned 00:37:29.289 --> 00:37:31.449 today that the definition of blight is subjective. 00:37:31.750 --> 00:37:35.050 It's a political choice, a label. If the narrative 00:37:35.050 --> 00:37:37.619 changes again, Could your neighborhood be next 00:37:37.619 --> 00:37:39.920 on the map? It's happened before. It can happen 00:37:39.920 --> 00:37:42.719 again. On that cheery note, thank you for joining 00:37:42.719 --> 00:37:45.079 us on this deep dive. Go look up the history 00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:46.900 of your own street. You might be surprised by 00:37:46.900 --> 00:37:48.860 what you find. We'll see you next time.