| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The pillars of the "urban renewal order,"
shorthand for an interlocking set
of social policies since the 1940s, were
crumbling fast by the 1960s. Urban populations,
especially in Western Europe,
the United States, and Canada, suddenly
no longer wanted the variety of once
progressive-minded public programs it
encompassed: highways through cities,
demolitions aimed at clearing "blighted"
or "gray" areas, redevelopment for public
housing superblocks and other megaprojects.
A slum in the eyes of a planner,
it turned out, was often a resident's cherished
homestead, and soon proponents
of the City of Tomorrow ran up against
increasing opposition. The fall of the
urban renewal order was driven from
below, to be sure; but the ideology of
this grassroots uprising was not clearly
drawn from the traditional left or right.
Yet in its wake opened a fleeting conceptual
space, where the fate of urban planning
and policy-even urban life in general-
could be debated and reconsidered,
sometimes quite radically.
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