Summary Comments: Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8: RACE, PLACE, AND THE EMERGENCE OF SPATIAL HIERARCHY

Opens with a personal story (Arwildie Windsley) who came to New Haven from Beaufort, S.C. as part of the "Great Migration."
"The Windsleys traveled in the vanguard of a great migration, which brought roughly 150,000 southern blacks north annually from WWII's industrial boom until the 1970s." (p. 255) (Actually, this was the tail end of the Great Migration of Blacks from South to North.)

1. Many residential areas were closed to them, as well as jobs.

First public housing project (Elm Haven) is built and at first considered a great success, but then, largely due to the closing of the Winchester plant, jobs and savings evaporate, and this public housing project would be transformed into a civic and economic disaster by century's end.

Unfortunately for blacks migrating north, this was the time of the "end of urbanism," as Rae describes:
"One historical fact about race asserts itslef in every aspect of New Haven's history after about 1950. The timing of the black migration to New Haven was an economic horror: if the goal was to capture high wage manufacturing jobs in and near central-city neighborhoods -- jobs that could be performed without advanced education -- the timing couldn't have been worse." (p. 258)

And another nice quote: "Ardie's adult life was spent struggling against the swift tide of creative destruction, at its point of convergence with racial segregation, at increasing spatial separation from an incresingly decentralized industrial system. She had, by the time she left town, lived through the end of urbanism." (p. 260)

Three actions which reinforced neighborhood inequality --
1. municipal zoning
2. neighborhood security studies of HOLC (Home Owners Loan Corp.)
3. initial phases of public housing

Zoning defined on p. 261. Initially zoning was a reaction to negative environmental and health effects of industrial production. In New Haven, as elsewhere, they separated heavy industry and commerce from residential areas. Major effect: "...to shift spaces away from heterogeneity of uses. No longer would it be easy to turn a corner house into a corner store. No longer would mixed-use neighborhoods be seen as the urban norm." According to Jane Jacobs, this leads to a reduction of security, confidence, real human value.

HOLC and New Deal evaluations of neighborhoods:
**practice of REDLINING, which created a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline in areas where minorities were concentrated. Criteria clearly racist, see p. 265. HOLC rejected the very idea of a diverse, immigrant city. Racism did reflect values that drove the housing market. see p. 266. HOLC team clearly placed great weight on newness and on isolation from difference, which obviously favored suburban housing.

"HOLC's stated intention in conducting residential security studies was to steer mortgage money toward economically safe neighborhoods and away from economically dangerous ones....the HOLC evaluations achieved that goal through accurate appraisal, given the historical prejudices abroad in the real estate markets of that period." (pp. 272-3)

Public housing begins (Elm Haven). No stigma in early years of public housing. But would come to be looked upon very negatively. Despite the best of intentions, public housing tends to anchor people (mainly Blacks) to poor neighborhoods with few opportunities. Concentration effects of so many poor people in the projects -- crime, drugs, etc. (June Manning Thomas talks about this in Detroit.)

Ghetto comes to be identified with Blacks (defined, p. 280). "The intense marginalization of black ghettoes is an inescapable element in the end of urbanism story." (p. 280)