Summary Comments: Chapter 10

SUMMARY COMMENTS: CHAPTER 10: EXTRAORDINARY POLITICS: DICK LEE, URBAN RENEWAL, AND THE END OF URBANISM

Dick Lee takes office in Jan. '54, and he knows he is good at politics (in some ways like Frank Rice was good as mayor -- cultivating personal relationships, etc.). But there was an important difference -- Lee knew the city had big problems that would require leadership, and "extraordinary" politics to address. But Lee was unaware of some aspects of the city that would undermine his efforts to improve it. On the top of p. 313, Rae notes that Lee was great at GOVERNMENT but failed in terms of GOVERNANCE.

Rae defines what he means by "renewing" the city, certainly NOT the kind of renewal the Lee administration practiced. Rae outlines a "tall order," basically the restoration of urbanism in the face of the "accidents of urban destruction" (p. 313) See also the bullet points, pp. 313-314.

Lee's situation also different from Rices's in 1910. (a) sharp decline in grounded leadership; (b) end of urbanism (p. 315)

1. But counterbalancing these losses, was the large-scale help from the federal government, which Lee virtually created an alternative government (the Kremlin) to tap into and carry out urban renewal on a grand scale -- this was the "extraordinary politics" of the Lee era.
2. He recruited the smartest, most arrogant people to manage this massive urban renewal effort.
3. I like the name for this shadow government -- the Kremlin.
4. Kind of urban redevelopment laid out in the 1949 Housing Act was large-scale, hardly favorable to small-scale urbanism. (see p. 318)

In contrast to the standard view of public bureaucracies as inefficient, low quality results -- "Lee's Kremlin was a startling exception: its project plans, its budgetary ingenuity, its shrewd organizational workings, its capacity to compete for federal funding, all of these and more of its aspects were of the very highest quality." (p. 321)

Organic analogy -- federal aorta pumping economic energy into the Kremlin.

Got an amazing amount of money from federal govt. -- on a per capita basis, far and away the highest of all U.S. cities by a wide margin. (see p. 320)

Lee creates Citizens Action Committee (CAC) made up of business leaders supportive of his plans, to blunt criticism of the harm done under the guise of urban renewal. These leaders were not really "grounded" in the city, more of an invented elite.

Impact of Urban Renewal (pp. 320-321), stresses the devastation wrought by highway building in particular.

Notes the "modernist ideas" that are reflected in Lee's urban renewal program, even if Lee was unaware of modernist thinkers and architects such as Le Corbusier. See all of pp. 332-333. Clearly hostile to urbanism. Especially Vincent Scully's critique, to which Lee responds personally (p. 335)

Residential and Racial Impact of Urban Renewal

1. Note observation of the first director of New Haven's Family Relocation Office - "the job is impossible" (p. 338)
2. Tremendous numbers of people relocated.
3. Proportionally, it was mainly "Negro Removal" and the Africanization of public housing. But also at the center of this story is "White Removal" to the suburbs, which was voluntary and encouraged. Over 50,000 whites left New Haven, 1950-70.

Business impact of urban renewal was often lethal, especially for small business that once made up the thick fabric of enterprise of urbanism. Even a downtown mall ultimately failed.

All this urban renewal and redevelopment could not make up for the decline in manufacturing that had been the basis for so much of New Haven's economic life.

Lee did recognize that all this change was not necessarily doing poor people much good, so he created the "sociological version of Ed Logue's Kremlin -- Community Progress, Inc. (CPI), which grew fat with federal money (300 full-time employees). Instituted job training programs, although not enough jobs were available. Really did not involve or engage the poor themselves.

Lee and CPI staff recognized that: "...even the best built public housing sometimes created 'nothing but transplanted ghettos where the poor are lost among the poor, the alienated among the alienated, unmotivated school children consigned to schools full of their own.'" (p. 349)

Model to the Nation -- yet New Haven and Dick Lee are praised nationally. (p. 351) Receive "Model Cities" designation.

Then, a race riot, Aug. 1967. Politcal impact great. How could this happen in a "model city?"

Lee could not deliver jobs to these areas -- "mousetrapped by history." See, bottom p. 354.

CPI really out of touch: "an overly centralized, paternalistic, big brother institution, manned by 'planner administrators' who believe they know what is best for everyone." (p. 356)

In many ways, Lee was a remarkable mayor (bottom, p. 357), yet the forces of creative destruction which led to the end of urbanism would undermine even his best efforts. See last paragraph, p. 360.
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See you tomorrow to begin wrapping up this urban saga.