URBAN RENEWAL IN RURAL AMERICA: NORTH CAROLINA’S

URBAN RENEWAL IN RURAL AMERICA:

North Carolina’s Role Facilitating Long Term Decline in 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.

ABSTRACT

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.

Implications

This piece hopes to produce a more holistic picture of the federal urban renewal program and illustrate how the program elevated property values in white neighborhoods while destroying values in neighborhoods of color. Unpacking this chapter of planning history provides important context for inter-neighborhood inequality in rural towns. By demonstrating the reach of this federal program in reshaping the trajectories of rural neighborhoods of color, this history may help guide discussion on where community-driven public investment is needed to remedy the impacts of federal urban renewal.

INTRODUCTION Urban renewal often refers to a broad collection of local programs subsidized by the federal government that frequently led to the demolition of black neighborhoods. Research around urban renewal continues to reveal the racist origins of city planning as a profession. Local government studies and reports demonstrating the need for federal funding frequently premiered tools and analyses recognizable to today’s planners, such as maps, charts, tables, zoning, housing, and traffic studies.

In speeches and reports from local leaders and planners, the overwhelming inspiration around the program is a largescale assault on “blight” – a term used to describe the distressed state of housing or commercial buildings, but also heavily associated with minority households and tenants. By locating and quantifying “blight”, one of planners’ first major acts as a profession led to the largescale demolition of Black neighborhoods and

FIGURE 1 - North Carolina Urban Renewal Programs excluding Cumberland County. Source: HUD Urban Renewal Directory (1974)

displacement of its residents. In her book, Root Shock (2016), Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove estimated that 1,600 Black neighborhoods were demolished in urban renewal, upending decades of social ties and destroying Black wealth.

Scholars have produced in-depth studies of urban renewal’s disparate impact on minority neighborhoods, including Black, Latino, and Asian communities (Renewing Inequality 2021). In addition to exploring how these neighborhoods changed in metropolitan areas, some researchers have added additional context by looking at how urban universities used urban renewal funds to expand into adjacent minority neighborhoods (Goldstein 2011). And while these stories should continue to be elevated, less attention has been given to urban renewal’s role in shaping planning in more rural communities (Hochfelder and Appler 2020).

MEASURING URBAN RENEWAL’S REACH IN RURAL NORTH CAROLINA Little research exists on the scope of urban renewal outside of major metropolitan areas. Only in the past few years have researchers identified historical documentation that reveals the full scope of the program (Appler 2016). In June 1974, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published its final Urban Renewal Directory, documenting every local program approved for funding under the Housing Act of 1949. The directory provides project-level data for 41 North Carolina communities, including project approval and execution dates, and approved and disbursed funds. It also details 11 types of urban renewal, which cover policies such as code enforcement, demolition, or neighborhood development.

Between 1958 and 1974, the federal government spent $161 million on urban renewal projects in 41 localities across North Carolina (HUD 1974). Winston-Salem and Charlotte alone received over $50 million for large-scale demolitions of Black neighborhoods in or adjacent to their downtowns. Brooklyn in Charlotte or Hayti in Durham are commonly cited examples of how the federal program impacted thousands of Black households in North Carolina (Kelley 2016). Of the localities that received federal funds, 34% - or $55 million – were spent outside of metropolitan areas. And of the 120 projects approved for funding, 67 were located outside metro areas.

Rural Planning in the Urban Renewal Process

In the early years of urban renewal policy following the Housing Act of 1949, the federal government emphasized and funded the construction of new, affordable units in communities that would be impacted by slum clearance policies (Flanagan 1997). The 1949 Act pushed for 800,000 new units of public housing to replace aging units in lowincome neighborhoods over an eight-year period. By the mid-1950s, only a quarter of those units were constructed and conservatives in the Eisenhower Administration reassessed federal policies around the promotion of public housing. Under the new Housing Act of 1954, public housing construction was scaled back to only 30,000 units and allowed cities to carry out demolition without also investing in the communities to mitigate displacement. This shift away from housing, coupled with funding and policy restrictions on the federal public housing program, helped facilitate long term decline in neighborhoods across the nation – particularly in low-income communities of color.

In addition to its shift away from housing as a primary goal of the program, the 1954 update to federally funded urban renewal would have implications for local planning capacity. For the first time, a national agency would require official planning documents from localities of less than 25,000 residents that sought to use federal funding (Flanagan 1997, Renewing Inequality). Section 701 stipulated:

“To facilitate urban planning for smaller communities lacking adequate planning resources, the Administrator is authorized to make planning grants to State planning agencies for the provision of planning assistance (including surveys, land use studies, urban renewal plans, technical services, and other planning work, but excluding plans for specific public works) to cities and other municipalities having a population of less than 25,000 according to the latest decennial census.”

According to Carl Feiss, who helped spearhead the Section 701 requirements under the 1954 act, small towns’ inability to use federal resources from the 1949 act stemmed from

their inexperience developing plans or quantifying housing needs. By the early 1950s, Feiss wrote “It soon became apparent that small cities did not know what it was all about.” An estimated $1 billion in federal funds went towards local planning efforts between the act’s passage and 1981 (Feiss 1985).

In North Carolina, funding from Section 701 helped establish the Division of Community Planning, a statewide agency that would go on to produce dozens of technical reports for small, rural communities between 1955 and 1972. The Division’s work in each locality was typically broken up into a handful of studies on local land use, neighborhoods, central business districts, and economy and demographics. The bureaucratic process behind urban renewal affected neighborhoods in ways other than simply selecting which blocks to be demolished. As described below, the planning documents required to access federal funding in themselves helped solidify the economic trajectory of rural neighborhoods.

Although cities received a disproportionate share of urban renewal funds, rural communities often received greater per capita funding for their renewal programs. Between 1964 and 1969, the City of Washington received over $5 million for urban renewal projects in downtown and adjacent neighborhoods that would displace 53 White and 111 non-White families (Renewing Inequality 2021). In 1970, fewer than 9,000 people lived in the city limits, 41% of whom were Black (U.S. Census 1970). Per capita, urban renewal funding for Washington was over twice that of Winston-Salem, which received the most funding of any North Carolina locality (Figure 2).

In addition to Washington, Rockingham, North Wilkesboro, and Mount Airy all received greater per capita funding than Winston-Salem. Fayetteville and Raleigh were among the lowest in per capita funding for urban renewal. Controlling for population, it is clear the program had an outsized impact in rural communities despite the fact that these communities received only a third of the state’s overall urban renewal funding.

In addition to housing conditions, neighborhood analyses frequently measured variables such as traffic-related deaths, public assistance cases, and health characteristics. These reports were often most overt in characterizing the prevalence of “blight” in low-income Black neighborhoods and often made recommendations for demolition that mirrored outcomes in larger metro areas.

In some cases, reports produced by the Division of Community Planning were the first official planning documents produced for small areas. In addition to building the cases for where local government should invest resources, the reports also served as an important signal for the private sector. In their introduction to a 1968 land development study for Wilkesboro, state staff wrote about how the data produced in their report would help guide private investment:

“The information contained in a land use analysis can be valuable to the citizen of [Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro] because it shows them where poor conditions and facilities exist; to investors, because it can guide their purchase of land and buildings by showing where the best industrial and commercial sites exist; it furnishes the civic leaders and government officials evidence of what has been done and what needs to be done and assists the planner because a knowledge of the existing use of land is basic to all community planning.” Planning Beyond Urban Renewal: Henderson, North Carolina

The Division’s reports were important beyond simply meeting the planning criteria set by federal law. Because many of these plans were the first official documentation of neighborhood conditions, they used planning to either elevate or devalue neighborhoods based on race.

In 1973, HUD approved $261,000 for a “neighborhood development project” in the City of Henderson (HUD 1974). Although there is no record in the directory of HUD disbursing funds to Henderson to carry out its proposed urban renewal program, the Division’s recommendations illustrate how some of the city’s first planning efforts

FIGURE 2 - In 1974 dollars. Communities that received $0 were approved for funding that was never disbursed. Sources: 1974 Urban Renewal

Directory; 1970 U.S. Census.

FIGURE 3 - “Recommended Treatment” for Henderson neighborhoods. Source: NC Division of Community Planning

would protect wealth in white neighborhoods and recommend demolition in its neighborhoods of color.

The Henderson neighborhood study summarized the challenges facing community development in each area by identifying the prevalence of distressed housing units as well as documenting the racial makeup of residents. Like other communities, the Division of Community Planning emphasized that effective neighborhood planning not only addressed existing “blight” among housing units but should also work against blight spreading to other areas of the community. Keeping in line with understandings of blight as a kind of medical condition, the Division provided four types of “recommended treatment”: preservation, conservation, rehabilitation, and redevelopment. Preservation and conservation were reserved for higher income single-family homes occupied by White homeowners. Rehabilitation and redevelopment (demolition) were typically prescribed for low-income neighborhoods with higher rates of Black renters.

For example, over 90% of dilapidated housing in Neighborhoods 9 and 4, located north and south of the central business district, were occupied by Black households. Demolition – indicated by the red area in Figure 3 – was recommended for the most distressed blocks of each neighborhood, which were predominantly occupied by Black renters. By comparison, Neighborhood 5,

located west of Downtown, was “a middle-income white neighborhood with a few older homes.” Unlike Neighborhoods 9 and 4, the Division recommended city staff “conserve” the area by strictly enforcing its single-family zoning and investing in recreational facilities. Today, median home values in Neighborhood 5 are over 40% greater than in the Black neighborhoods adjacent to downtown.

Another key difference in planning staffs’ treatment of White and Black neighborhoods was how they addressed lowincome White neighborhoods. Neighborhood 11 – towards northeast of Downtown – was nearly identical to Neighborhood 9. Both neighborhoods had roughly 570 housing units, approximately 25% of which were considered “substandard.” Unlike Neighborhood 9, 97% of substandard housing units in Neighborhood 11 were occupied by White households. Despite the data representing identical challenges, the report recommended that “conservation and rehabilitation in existing residential areas will clear up the more serious signs of neighborhood decline” (NC Division of Community Planning 1971).

Examples like Henderson reveal two aspects of the urban renewal program. First, although federal funds were never allocated to the city to carry out any kind of program, the planning behind the effort still contributed to public devaluation of Black neighborhoods. And second, by treating “blight” as a disease that could move from one block to the next, urban renewal planning also made recommendations for labeling and protecting wealth in White neighborhoods.

CONCLUSION While additional archival research is needed to better understand how projects in rural communities were initially conceived and executed, this article provides initial evidence for urban renewal’s pervasiveness in North Carolina’s rural communities. Reflecting on his time reviewing small town urban renewal proposals between 1949 and 1954, Carl Feiss wrote “city after city lacked planning ordinances, official planning systems, trained planning staff, (sic) planning budgets.” Without these structures, there was “no way a locality could protect, or guarantee protection of, a federal investment in redevelopment plans or projects.” By dedicating funds for technical assistance, the Housing Act of 1954 built capacity among rural communities to take advantage of the urban renewal program. In North Carolina, these inaugural planning efforts were coordinated through the NC Division of Community Planning, which analyzed land use, public facilities, and neighborhood conditions across rural North Carolina. These reports reflect how these first planning efforts drew formal boundaries around White and Black neighborhoods, preserving or elevating the value of assets in the former while devaluing assets in the latter.

REFERENCES

Appler, Douglas R. 2017. “Changing the Scale of Analysis for Urban Renewal Research: Small Cities, the State of Kentucky, and the 1974 Urban Renewal Directory.” Journal of Planning History 16 (3): 200–221. https://doi. org/10.1177/1538513216657006.

Feiss, Carl. 1985. “The Foundations of Federal Planning Assistance A Personal Account of the 701 Program.” Journal of the American Planning Association 51 (2): 175–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944368508976208.

Flanagan, Richard M. 1997. “The Housing Act of 1954: The Sea Change in National Urban Policy.” Urban Affairs Review 33 (2): 265–86. https://doi. org/10.1177/107808749703300207.

Fullilove, Mindy. 2016. “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, And What We Can Do About It.” New Village Press.

Goldstein, B., 2011. Planning’s end? Urban renewal in New Haven, the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and the fall of the New Deal spatial order. Journal of Urban History, 37(3), pp.400-422.

Hochfelder, David, and Douglas Appler. 2020. “Introduction to Special Issue on Urban Renewal in Smaller Cities.” Journal of Planning History 19 (3): 139–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513219898001.

Housing Act of 1954. 1954. 12 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.

Kelley, Pam. 2016. “How Urban Renewal Destroyed Charlotte’s Brooklyn Neighborhood.” The Charlotte Observer, March 18, 2016. https://www. charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article66934337.html.

NC Division of Community Planning. 1965. “Central Business District Revitalization Plan, North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.” https://digital. ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p16062coll9/id/163415/rec/4.

———. 1971. “Neighborhood Analysis and Housing Submarket Analysis, Henderson, North Carolina.” https://archive.org/details/ neighborhoodanal1971hend/page/n117/mode/2up.

“Renewing Inequality.” 2020. American Panorama. Digital Scholarship Lab. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal.

“Urban Renewal Directory.” 1974. U.S. Department of Housing And Urban Development.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors attest that they have no financial interest in the materials and subjects discussed in this article.