"During the period of the federal urban renewal program (roughly 1949-1973) cities across the country engaged in massive “slum clearance”—the physical destruction of existing urban fabric for the purpose of redevelopment. Such clearance was undertaken almost exclusively in poor, minority neighborhoods. In the mid-1960s, residents of San Francisco’s primarily Latino Mission District organized to keep the local redevelopment agency from applying for federal urban renewal funding for their neighborhood. Existing literature gives the impression that the neighborhood groups defeated the redevelopment agency, thereby avoiding the imminent clearance of the Mission. Through an analysis of the preliminary plans drawn up for the neighborhood and other historical sources, this paper demonstrates that such clearance was not imminent because the redevelopment agency had recommended a mix of “spot clearance” and rehabilitation. After the initial application for federal funding was stopped, the neighborhood groups themselves took up the mantle of renewal, acting on many of the agency’s plans. The neighborhood groups did not defeat the redevelopment agency, but rather forced the redevelopment agency into collaboration. This paper argues that neighborhood/city collaborations are a part of the legacy of urban renewal which has been overlooked by scholars who emphasize the many abuses of the program. Existing histories of urban renewal have thereby (and in many cases inadvertently) provided fuel for privatization arguments, and a broadly anti-government agenda. While existing literature argues that community mobilization achieved neighborhood autonomy from public authority, this paper argues that community mobilization made the neighborhood a locus of public authority." Source: Institute for the Study of Social Change. ISSC Fellows Working Papers U.C. Berkeley
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