Pioneering observers of the urban landscape Bernard Frieden and Lynne Sagalyn delve into the inner workings of the exciting new public entrepreneurship and public-private partnerships that have revitalized the downtowns of such cities as Boston, San Diego, Seattle, St. Paul, and Pasadena.
Originally published in 1972, Minority Perspectives is the second in a series exploring metropolitan problems within the government structure. The 1960’s were a period of civils rights movements as well as poverty in the United States and in the 70’s, it became clear that poverty was closely linked to race. This report sets out to explore issues contributing to the metropolitan-minority poverty problem such as racial exclusion and public policy. The papers included in this report discuss issues such as political power in metropolitan areas, the impact an address can have on economic opportunity for minority groups and the effects that laws and litigation can have on poverty. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and urban studies.
No one likes ticky-tacky houses spread all over the landscape and invading the suburbs, least of all the people who already live there. But are environmentalists and suburbanites right when they object? Bernard Frieden, Professor of Urban Planning at MIT, doesn't think so. At least not when their objections take the form that they have in northern California. In this lively and certainly controversial book, Frieden uncovers a powerful, ideologically driven crusade to keep the average citizen from homeownership and the good life in the suburbs. Written in the best tradition of civic reform, Frieden's observations are a warning signal to environmentalists, whose concerns may backfire, and to homebuilders and the general public in other parts of the country where projects for urban growth may soon run up against the protectionist's blockade. In a series of case studies involving Marin County, Alameda, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Mateo County, and Contra Costa Couny, Frieden carefully documents instances where builders and developers attempting to construct new housing have found themselves harassed by a network of environmental regulations, public officials, and citizen crusaders. The no-growth tactics of these groups include placing land in agricultural preserves, raising the minimum lot size for single family houses, declaring moratoria on new water and sewer connections, setting explicit growth quotas, and charging thousands of dollars in public utilities "hookup" fees for each new house. Eyewitness accounts throughout the book recreate the noisy and contentious atmosphere of community meetings with developers and planning commissions. Frieden asserts that the connections between housing and serious environmental issues such as pollution, use of toxic substances, nuclear testing hazards, and the conservation of natural resources are few and minor. The attack on homebuilding does not follow from the central concerns of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups but stretches the environmental agenda to phony issues—issues that have been used Marin-County style to legitimize arrogant public policies designed to keep the average citizen from using the land, while preserving the social and fiscal advantages of the influential few. Middle-class citizens are in fact being hustled. The environmental controversies Frieden documents have already discouraged large, planned-unit developments with community open space, driven up the cost of housing, and promoted a return to 1950's style building practices of expensive freestanding single-family homes, each on its own lot in small, exclusive developments at the urban fringe.
This critical evaluation of the efforts by the federal government to reduce poverty and alleviate inequality in the inner cities during the past decade is the work of two urban scholars who were themselves deeply involved in the design, implementation, and review of those programs from 1965 through the early 1970s. Their balanced, three-dimensional view is achieved through the double focus of academic detachment and practical experience.The book traces the Model Cities Program from its origins as the proposed grand coordinator of all the Great Society's urban expectations, one intended to marshal and interrelate independent federal agencies horizontally and levels of government vertically, with the newly established Department of Housing and Urban Development wielding the conductor's baton. From these heady beginnings, the authors chart the subsequent inablility of both the Johnson and Nixon administrations to implement the program effectively, and the reasons why results failed to measure up to rhetorical goals and early overoptimism.By analyzing the performance of the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the White House, this study explains why officials in Washington were unable to meet the priorities of the cities and why the cities in turn were unable to use federal resources to make significant improvements in their poverty neighborhoods. Furthermore, the book offers an initial interpretation of two newly established programs-special and general revenue sharing-which aim, from a different direction, at some of the same goals as did the Model Cities Program, but which have failed to learn some of the key cautionary lessons that a proper study of the earlier program should have taught. After documenting the failure of grand designs for a coordinated federal approach to urban problems in the 1960s, the authors propose an alternative strategy for making effective use of revenue sharing and other current programs for the cities. As they state, "A careful reading of the federal implementation effort should help to define a future role for the federal government in reducing poverty and inequality, drawing on the experiences of the 1960s but without repeating the overly optimistic assumptions and mistakes of that decade."In addition to the published literature, The Politics of Neglect makes use of information until now unavailable to other scholars: the authors' recollection of their personal participation, private files kept by a number of former federal officials, and interviews with these and other officials who served on the White House staff and in the federal agencies during two administrations. This book will offer insight to laymen and professionals alike, including mayors, public administrators, concerned citizens, city planners, and students of urban problems.
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