Feature Article: Urban Renewal in Rural America
U RBAN RE N E WAL IN RURA L A MERICA : N o r t h C a r o l i n a ’ s R o l e F a c i l i t a t i n g L o n g Te r m D e c l i n e i n Neighborhoods of Color through the Housing Act of 1954
FRANK MURACA Frank Muraca is an analyst at the UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative
(DFI). He helps communities address affordable housing and community development
challenges using data-driven strategies. Frank graduated from UNC’s Department of City &
Regional Planning in 2020 with a focus on affordable housing development and disaster recovery. He is originally from Charlottesville, VA. All opinions expressed in this article are his alone.
ABSTR ACT Problem Approach & Findings Over the past decades, activists and researchers have successfully shown how historical planning policies - such as urban renewal - were used in major metropolitan areas to all but guarantee longterm economic decline and displacement in neighborhoods of color. However, over two thirds of urban renewal projects were executed in communities with fewer than 100,000 people, suggesting that the program was far more active in small towns than previously understood. This paper provides additional evidence to a growing body of literature demonstrating urban renewal’s extensive role in rural communities. It seeks to accomplish three tasks: 1) measure the federal program’s reach across North Carolina’s urban and rural communities; 2) survey technical reports written by state planning agencies to help small towns compete for urban renewal funds; and 3) compare how white and non-white neighborhoods were analyzed by these state planners. By consulting historical HUD and North Carolina planning documents, this paper shows the pervasiveness of the urban renewal program in rural communities. It also establishes the planning profession’s early role in devaluing neighborhoods of color outside of major metro areas, even in cases where renewal plans were never funded by the federal government.
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