Urban Renewal Archive
Erica Copeland
18, September 2023
Few race-conscious public policies displaced African-American individuals and families like the federal urban renewal program from 1949 to 1974. Hundreds of cities spent millions of taxpayer dollars engaging in "slum removal" of entire neighborhoods only recently occupied by Blacks from the Great Migration. Their forced relocation—almost always without statutorily promised relocation expenses and assistance—was a harbinger of the modern ghetto and a blueprint for urban planning approaches that continue to this day.
As part of CLiME's Displacement Project, we began a broad inquiry into urban renewal in 2021. The results will follow in the form of academic papers, policy briefs and here, a growing archive of hard-to-find data on the program's implementation in select U.S. cities. CLiME Fellow and Bloustein graduate, Erica Copeland, assembled variables on the location, demographic variables and costs associated with primarily African-American displacement for a select period of time. We hope this contributes to a growing body of academic research on an under-appreciated aspect of systemic racism carried out by the federal and local governments at midcentury, whose wealth-retarding effects persist.
See the archive in its entirety below: